Skip to main content
Baking

Wintek Vegetable Pie

A baked pie with boiled potatoes, onions, celery, carrot, stewed tomatoes, peas, and a butter‑flour gravy, topped with a plain crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Wintek Vegetable Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer slices of cold boiled potatoes, onions, celery, and carrot.

  2. Add 1 scant cup of stewed tomatoes and ½ can of peas.

  3. Prepare a gravy by thickening stock with butter and flour, then pour it over the vegetables.

  4. Cover the dish with a plain pie crust and bake until golden 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy that binds the vegetables together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the gravy and helps it thicken smoothly.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the filling and hold their shape under the gravy.
Stewed tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity to the filling.
Plain pie crust
Seals the dish and browns in the oven to form a golden top.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be cooked with the butter and stock long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken properly. Stirring it in smoothly prevents lumps, so the gravy coats the vegetables evenly rather than pooling.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, celery, carrot, tomato, butter, flour):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, celery, carrot, tomato, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes