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A Pot Pie

A savory pie with fowl, ham, potatoes, and suet pastry, simmered in water and thickened with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fowl pieces and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Make a paste with the suet and flour, ensuring there is plenty.

  3. Roll out the paste and cut into long squares.

Assemble

  1. Grease a pot and line it with the paste, reaching nearly to the top.

  2. Layer the bottom with slices of cold ham, then add the fowl pieces and quartered potatoes, interspersing with squares of paste.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of water.

  4. Cover with a lid of paste, making a slit in the center for steam to escape.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil steadily for 2 hours.

  2. Half an hour before finishing, add bits of butter rolled in flour through the slit to thicken the gravy.

  3. Once done, transfer the pie to a large dish and pour the gravy over it.

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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Flour and butter 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

Fowls
Provide the main meat, whose juices flavour the gravy as the pie cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat to the paste, keeping it tender and flaky.
All-purpose flour
Forms the paste that lines and covers the pot, giving the pie its structure.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that soften during boiling and thicken the filling.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour coats the butter so it thickens the gravy smoothly as it melts.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour through the slit. Flour-coated butter added late thickens the simmering liquid without lumps. Adding it too early, or dropping it in unmixed, can leave the gravy thin or clumped.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, ham, 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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