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Veal Pot Pie

A stew of veal in a biscuit-like crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Wash the veal pieces and place them in a pot with enough water to nearly cover them.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Season the stew with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and butter.

  4. Let the veal stew for nearly an hour.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, sift the flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt together.

  2. Mix in 1 teaspoon of butter and enough milk to form a dough like biscuit.

  3. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.

  4. Cut an opening in the center of the dough.

Cover and finish

  1. Lay the dough over the meat.

  2. Cover the pot.

  3. Boil the covered pot for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the pot pie and meat from the pot.

  5. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  6. Add more water and butter if necessary.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle stew.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, improving flavor and the crust's tenderness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together like biscuit dough.

The step that matters

Boil the covered pot for 20 minutes. The dough must cook through in steam trapped under the lid. Lifting the lid or boiling too hard can leave the crust raw or uneven, and the gravy may thin or scorch.

“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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