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Vegetable Pie

A baked pie filled with stewed vegetables, peas, and sago or tapioca, topped with short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

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 and stew

  1. Stew the onion, carrot, celery, green peas, sago or tapioca, butter, pepper, and salt in a small amount of water until three-quarters cooked.

  2. Cut the vegetables into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a pie dish and cover with short crust pastry.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago or tapioca
Thickens the cooking liquid as its starch swells with heat and moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the vegetables.
Onion
Becomes sweet and aromatic as it softens during stewing.
Short crust pastry
Encloses the filling and bakes into a crisp, golden top crust.

The step that matters

Stewing until three-quarters cooked. The filling gets only about 30 minutes in the oven, so the vegetables need partial cooking first. Stewing in a small amount of water also softens them and lets the starch thicken the liquid, so the pie does not turn out watery or firm.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, celery, butter, pepper, 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.

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