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Veal Pot Pie

A savory pie with veal, potatoes, onions, and biscuit dough crust, simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut veal into pieces the size of a silver dollar.

  2. Put veal in a pot with 2 quarts of water and add chopped onion.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Add potatoes cut into pieces.

  5. Skim the pot.

Assemble and finish

  1. Layer the mixture in a baking dish with light biscuit dough.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in a little flour and water when boiling.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat flavor, and its fat and connective tissue soften into tender meat during long simmering.
Potatoes
Add body to the filling, as their starch thickens the cooking liquid and softens into the stew.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory sweetness to the broth as it cooks down with the veal.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy-like sauce that holds the filling together.
Light biscuit dough
Forms the topping, baking into a soft, tender crust over the hot filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and water while boiling. Flour clumps when added dry or unevenly. Mixing it into a smooth slurry and stirring it into the boiling liquid lets the starch disperse and thicken the sauce evenly as it heats and gelatinizes.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, potato, pepper, biscuit, flour, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, potato, pepper, biscuit, flour, butter. 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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