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Plain Veal Stew or Pot-pie

A stew of veal and salt pork cooked in water with a thickened batter of eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain Veal Stew or Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Cut the veal into pieces, not too small.

  2. Place the veal and small pieces of salt pork in a pot.

  3. Season with plenty of black pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour in enough hot water to cover the meat and bring to a boil.

  5. Boil until the meat is thoroughly cooked.

Add the batter and serve

  1. While boiling, drop in spoonfuls of batter made from beaten eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, and enough flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Cover the pot and serve as soon as the batter is cooked.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Knuckle of veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long boiling, giving the stew its body.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the broth as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter so the dumplings hold together while they cook.
Buttermilk
Adds mild acidity that tenderizes the batter and reacts with baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, lightening the batter.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that sets the batter into thick dumplings.

The step that matters

Boiling the batter dumplings. Dropped batter must cook through in a covered pot at a steady boil. Lifting the lid or letting the liquid drop lets steam escape and can leave the centers gummy, while the baking soda reaction needs heat to set the batter.

“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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