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Veal Pot-pie

A savory pie with veal and a crust made from flour, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Place the veal in a pot with 1 quart of water over a slow fire.

  2. Skim the surface before boiling.

  3. Add a teacup of cold water to help remove scum, then boil hard.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Remove all scum.

Add the crust and finish cooking

  1. Cut the crust into equal pieces without rolling.

  2. Lay the crust pieces on top of the meat to cover.

  3. Cover the pot tightly.

  4. Boil slowly for 1 hour, ensuring steam does not escape.

Make the crust

  1. Mix flour, butter, and a little salt for the crust.

  2. Add milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Knead the dough well.

  4. Let the dough rise until light, about 1 hour in winter or 30 minutes in summer.

  5. Add baking soda during the second kneading in summer.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust dough as its proteins develop with kneading.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the crust and makes it more tender.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour into a soft, workable dough.

The step that matters

Boil slowly with the pot tightly covered. A hard boil toughens meat, while gentle simmering lets connective tissue soften slowly. Keeping the lid tight holds in steam and moisture so the veal stays juicy and the liquid does not reduce too far.

“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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