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Vegetable Pie

A puff pastry pie filled with boiled vegetables and served with a veal and ham gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Half boil the vegetables in good broth for a short time.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, boil veal, ham, pepper, salt, bay leaf, mushrooms, shallots, parsley, and onion until thick.

  2. Strain the gravy and mix in cream if using.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the vegetables in a pie dish and cover with puff pastry.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  3. Pour the gravy into the pie 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.

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. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Artichoke + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Artichoke + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky crust that covers and seals the pie.
Veal
Builds the savory body of the gravy as it simmers and thickens.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the strained gravy.
Shallots
Contribute mild, aromatic flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Half boil the vegetables. Partly cooking the vegetables first softens them so they finish tender during baking without turning mushy or staying raw. Undercooking leaves them firm, while overcooking makes them collapse under the pastry.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, potato, artichoke, cauliflower, beans, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, potato, artichoke, cauliflower, beans, onion. 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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