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Pot Pie of Beef, Veal, or Chicken

A savory pot pie made with boiled potatoes, salt pork, and chosen meat, topped with a crust and simmered until baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Pot Pie of Beef, Veal, or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes until fine, then run the mash through a sieve.

  2. Mix in salt, butter, and sweet cream or milk.

  3. Add flour until the mixture can be rolled out.

  4. Roll out the crust to ½ inch thick and cut it into oblong pieces.

Prepare the filling

  1. Fry the salt pork slices.

  2. Cut the fried pork slices with the chosen meat.

  3. Boil the meat in just enough water to cover until nearly done.

  4. Slice the additional potatoes thinly.

Assemble and cook

  1. Layer the crust, potatoes, and meat alternately in a pot, sprinkling salt and pepper over each meat layer.

  2. Cover the top and bottom with crust.

  3. Pour the boiling meat broth over until it covers everything.

  4. Simmer until the top crust is baked.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Flour
Stiffens the mash so it can be rolled out into a workable crust.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the crust and carries flavor.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mashed potato crust tender.
Potatoes
Form the starchy mash for the crust and the sliced layers in the pot.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and salty flavor to the pork layer.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling broth over the layers. Boiling broth must cover everything so the crust and potatoes absorb moisture and cook through while the pot simmers; too little liquid leaves dry layers.

“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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