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A Veal Pot-pie

A pot pie made with veal, salt pork, and pastry crust.

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 meat

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

  2. Dredge the veal slices in flour and add them to the hot fat, browning slightly.

  3. Add 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 dough to cover the meat and place it over the pot.

  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. Flour + peppertop 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat browns the veal and adds savory richness to the pot.
Common pastry dough
Forms a crust that covers the pot and traps steam as the meat cooks.

The step that matters

Cover the pot and cook gently. A gentle simmer keeps the veal tender and lets the pastry cook through without the liquid boiling away or the meat toughening. Too much heat can dry out the meat and scorch the bottom of the pot.

“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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