Name: Baked Veal or Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients: 2 to 3 pounds veal or chicken, cut into small pieces; sliced potatoes; coarse sea salt; black pepper; pie crust

Why it works: Potato and pepper 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 ↓

Baked Veal or Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Line the sides of a small dinner pot with pie crust.
Layer the veal or chicken pieces and sliced potatoes in the pot.
Season each layer with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Continue layering until the pot is full.

Bake

Cover with pie crust and bake.

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.

Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + potatotop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together343 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or chicken: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it cooks in the pot.
Sliced potatoes: Add starch and bulk, softening as they cook and absorbing juices from the meat.
Pie crust: Forms the enclosing shell that holds the layers together and traps steam during baking.