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A Veal Pot-pie

A pot pie of veal and salt pork, simmered in water and baked under pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,930 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

A Veal Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Fry slices of salt pork in an iron pot.

  2. Add the veal slices to the hot fat and brown slightly.

  3. Pour in enough water to just cover the meat and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then dredge in a little flour.

Top and cook

  1. Roll out the pastry to cover the meat and place it on top.

  2. Cover the pot with a hot iron lid and cook gently for 45 minutes.

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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Veal + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish; slow cooking in liquid makes it tender.
Flour
Dredging coats the meat and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Common pastry
Forms a lid that traps steam, keeping the meat moist as it cooks.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat browns the veal and adds savory richness to the pot.

The step that matters

Cooking gently under the lid. Simmering at a gentle heat keeps the connective tissue in the veal breaking down slowly, so the meat turns tender rather than tough and dry. A boil would toughen the meat and could break up the pastry.

“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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