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Veal Pie

A pie made with cooked veal, broth, and biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Fill a baking dish with nicely-cooked veal and plenty of broth. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the dough

  1. Prepare the biscuit dough by mixing 2 cups of flour with 2 heaping teaspoons of baking powder.

  2. Work in a piece of lard the size of an egg until well combined.

  3. Mix in enough sweet milk to form a dough, then roll it out.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the veal with two layers of the biscuit dough, buttering between the layers.

  2. Bake until the dough is cooked through.

Serve

  1. Use veal broth for gravy.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Nicely-cooked veal
Forms the meaty filling that the biscuit dough covers.
Broth
Keeps the veal moist during baking and provides liquid for the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure of the biscuit dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the biscuit dough as it bakes.
Lard
Worked into the flour to make the biscuit dough tender and crumbly.
Sweet milk
Moistens the flour into a dough and adds richness.

The step that matters

Bake until the dough is cooked through. The two thick layers of biscuit dough can brown on top while the centre stays doughy, because heat needs time to travel through the dough. Check the middle of the top layer before removing the pie.

“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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