Skip to main content
Main

Veal Pot-pie

A savory stew of veal and pork in a thickened gravy served over biscuits or a baked crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Combine veal, fat salt pork, and enough water to cover the meat in a kettle.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  3. Half an hour before the meat is done, season with salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix flour and butter until smooth, then add to the kettle to thicken the gravy.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, add more flour until it reaches the consistency of cold cream.

Serve or steam

  1. Prepare warm biscuits.

  2. Place the biscuits on a hot platter, crust side down.

  3. Pour the meat and gravy over the biscuits and serve hot.

  4. Alternatively, roll dough about 1 inch thick.

  5. Place the dough on top of the meat.

  6. Cover the pot and steam for 25 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Veal knuckle
Collagen breaks down during slow simmering, giving the gravy body and the meat its tenderness.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth that carries into the gravy.
Flour
Starch swells when heated in the liquid, thickening the gravy.
Butter
Coats the flour so it blends smoothly and adds richness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Mixing flour and butter into the kettle. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Blending it with butter first lets it disperse evenly, and the starch must simmer long enough to thicken fully and lose its raw taste.

“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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes