Skip to main content
Main

Pot Pie

A stew of vegetables with dumplings in a buttery broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pot Pie

Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables and broth

  1. Heat the butter or olive oil in a pot.

  2. Add the minced onion and fry until lightly browned, about 15-20 minutes.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the carrots and parsnips; boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Add the potatoes and top with dumplings.

Cook the dumplings and make the gravy

  1. Cover and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Carefully remove the dumplings with a fork and spoon, and arrange the vegetables around them.

  3. For the gravy, mix the heaping tablespoon of flour with 1 cup of milk until smooth, then stir into the pot until it boils.

  4. Add another lump of butter to the gravy before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that softens during boiling and thickens the broth slightly.
Flour
Thickens the milk gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dumpling dough, making it light and airy.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dumpling dough and gravy come together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy and the frying onion.

The step that matters

Covering the pot while the dumplings boil. Trapped steam cooks the dumplings through and lifts them, so keeping the lid on and the heat steady prevents them from turning dense or soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, carrot, parsnip, potato, flour, milk):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, carrot, parsnip, potato, flour, milk. 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.

More pot pie recipes

Chicken 102Veal 74Pork 30Oyster 22Squab 12Peach 11 See all 20 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes