Skip to main content
Main

Pot Pie of Beef, Veal, or Chicken

A layered pot pie with potatoes, salt pork, and beef, veal, or chicken, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Pot Pie of Beef, Veal, or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Peel, boil, and mash the potatoes.

  2. Run the mashed potatoes through a sieve.

  3. Mix in salt, butter, and cream or milk.

  4. Stiffen the mixture with flour until it can be rolled out.

  5. Roll the crust to ½ inch thick.

  6. Cut the crust into oblong pieces.

Prepare the filling

  1. Fry the salt pork slices.

  2. Cut the fried salt pork into pieces.

  3. Boil the meat in just enough water to cover until nearly done.

  4. Peel and slice the remaining potatoes thinly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the crust, potatoes, and meat alternately in a baking dish, sprinkling salt and pepper over each layer of meat.

  2. Cover with crust on top and bottom.

  3. Pour the boiling meat broth over until it covers everything.

  4. Let the pie simmer until the top crust is baked.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed potatoes form the crust dough, and sliced potatoes add body to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mashed-potato crust a softer, more tender texture.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the mashed potatoes become smooth and workable.
Flour
Stiffens the potato mixture so it holds its shape and can be rolled out.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the filling as it fries and is cut into pieces.
Beef, veal, or chicken
Provides the main meat filling and, boiled in water, a broth that moistens the pie.

The step that matters

Stiffening the potato mixture with flour. Too little flour leaves the dough too soft to roll and cut, while too much makes the crust dense and tough. Add flour gradually until the dough is firm enough to roll.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes