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Vegetable Pot Pie

A baked dish of string beans and potatoes topped with a stiff batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the string beans and cut them into one-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the beans in slightly salted water.

  3. Peel and cut the potatoes into medium pieces, then boil them.

  4. Add the onion to the potatoes until they are not quite done.

  5. Drain the potatoes and beans, saving the stock for the sauce.

Make the sauce and filling

  1. Blend the bread crumbs, flour, and Crisco, then add the stock, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Combine the potatoes and beans with the sauce mixture.

Make the topping and bake

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, bread crumbs, and salt.

  2. Rub in the Crisco, then add milk to make a very stiff batter.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the batter on top of the potatoes, cover, and cook for 12 minutes.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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
Form the bulk of the filling and hold their shape while cooking through.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and gives the topping structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the topping rises and becomes light.
Crisco
Adds fat that makes the sauce rich and the topping tender.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients into a batter that sets as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the topping. The batter must be very stiff, as the record states. Too much liquid makes a thin batter that spreads and cooks gummy instead of rising into soft dumplings on top of the filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, potato, bread, pepper, flour, parsley, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, bread, pepper, flour, parsley, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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