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Baking

Vegetable Pie

A savory pie filled with a stew of broad beans, carrots, turnips, artichoke bottoms, mushrooms, onions, lettuce, parsley, celery, and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scald and blanch the broad beans.

  2. Cut the young carrots, turnips, artichoke bottoms, mushrooms, onions, lettuces, parsley, celery, and add peas.

Make the stew

  1. Make a nice stew with the vegetables and a little veal gravy; season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Bake and assemble

  1. Prepare a pie crust and line the edge of a pie dish, placing a cup upside down in the center to prevent sinking.

  2. Bake the crust in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  3. Pour the stew into the baked crust and cover it with the crust.

  4. For added richness, you can include a cup of cream.

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. Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Artichoke + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Broad beans
Add body and a tender, mild vegetable texture to the stew.
Veal gravy
Adds savory depth and moisture that binds the vegetables into a stew.
Artichoke bottoms
Contribute a dense, tender texture and a mild, nutty flavor.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savory flavor and moisture as they cook down.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fattier mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the crust before filling. Partly baking the pie crust until golden sets its structure and helps it stay crisp, so it does not turn soggy under the moist vegetable stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, turnip, artichoke, mushroom, lettuce, parsley):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, turnip, artichoke, mushroom, lettuce, parsley. 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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