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Veal Pot Pie

A pot pie made with veal, pastry, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and season the veal with salt and pepper.

  2. Line the sides of a pot with pastry.

  3. Add the veal and some squares of rolled-out pastry.

  4. Cut the butter into pieces and add it to the pot.

  5. Pour in enough water to cover the veal.

  6. Lay a sheet of pastry on top, leaving an opening in the center.

  7. Cover the pot with a lid and place it over moderate heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook slowly until the meat is done.

  2. Place the soft crust on a dish, add the meat, and top with the hard crust, brown side up.

  3. Serve the gravy in a separate dish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour 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

Veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Pastry
Forms the lining and top crust that enclose the meat and hold in the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy and filling as it melts during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the meat is done. Gentle, low heat lets the connective tissue in the veal break down slowly, leaving the meat tender. High heat toughens the meat and can dry out the liquid before the veal is ready.

“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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