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Veal Pie

A savory pie with veal, onions, carrots, and biscuit crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal and cold water; heat slowly.

  2. Remove scum as it begins to boil.

  3. Add onions, carrot cubes, and salt; simmer until very tender.

  4. Transfer meat to a deep baking dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil down the liquid to 1½ cups, strain, and remove most of the fat.

  2. Stir in cream and pepper to taste.

  3. Thicken with flour rubbed into butter; cook for 5 minutes and strain over the meat.

  4. If available, add cold boiled ham, cut into tiny pieces.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with biscuit dough and bake for 1 hour, covered with thick paper.

  2. Uncover and brown.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 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 when simmered slowly in water.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and combines with flour to form the thickening roux.
Biscuit dough
Forms a crust that bakes and browns over the meat filling.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour rubbed into butter; cook for 5 minutes and strain over the meat.. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid long enough to lose its raw starchy taste and to thicken fully. Undercooked flour leaves the sauce pasty and floury.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, cream, pepper, flour, butter, biscuit):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, cream, pepper, flour, butter, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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