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Veal, Pot Pie

A pot pie with stewed veal and 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

Prepare the veal

  1. Wash the veal pieces and place them in a pot with enough water to nearly cover them. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter, then let it stew for nearly an hour.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Mix in 1 teaspoon of butter and enough milk to form a dough similar to biscuit dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick and cut an opening in the center.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the dough over the meat, cover, and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the pot pie and meat, then thicken the gravy with flour. 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 main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing in liquid.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust and thickens the gravy as it binds with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the crust rises and turns light rather than dense.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crust and flavor to the stewed meat.
Milk
Moistens the flour so it forms a soft dough that holds together when rolled.

The step that matters

Placing the dough over the meat and boiling. The dough must sit on top of the simmering liquid and be covered so it steams through. Lifting the lid or boiling too hard can leave the crust heavy or uneven.

“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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