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Vegetable Pie

A savory pie of boiled vegetables served in a sauce, topped with a raised crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash all the vegetables thoroughly.

  2. Boil each vegetable separately in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid into one saucepan.

  4. Place the vegetables in another saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the consommé to the strained liquid.

  2. Thicken the liquid with flour and water.

  3. Season the liquid with cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Let the mixture boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture over the vegetables.

  6. Simmer the vegetables in the sauce together.

Serve

  1. Serve in a raised pie crust or a deep dish with a raised crust baked around it, 2 inches high.

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. Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Artichoke + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, savoury flavour to the filling.
Artichoke bottoms
Provide a tender, meaty texture that holds its shape in the sauce.
Asparagus
Contributes a tender texture and a distinct, grassy flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Consommé
Gives the sauce a concentrated, savoury meat-stock flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the liquid with flour and water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before it goes in, or it forms lumps. Starch thickens the sauce only when it is heated, so the liquid must boil briefly to reach full thickness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, turnip, carrot, artichoke, cauliflower, asparagus, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Endivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, carrot, artichoke, cauliflower, asparagus, flour. 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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