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Veal Pot-pie

A savory pie of veal and pork simmered in gravy, served over biscuits or with a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. In a kettle, combine veal, pork, and enough water to cover the meat.

  2. Boil very slowly for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  3. Half an hour before the meat is done, add salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  4. Keep the water level consistent by adding more as it boils away.

Thicken and serve

  1. To thicken the gravy, mix flour and butter until smooth, then add to the kettle.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, add more flour until it reaches the consistency of cold cream.

  3. Prepare warm biscuits and place them crust side down on a hot platter.

  4. Pour the meat and gravy over the biscuits and serve hot.

  5. Alternatively, roll dough about 1 inch thick, place it on top of the meat, cover, and steam for 25 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 knuckle
Breaks down slowly into tender meat and gelatin-rich body in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Mixed with flour to form a smooth roux that thickens the gravy and adds richness.
Fat salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the broth as it cooks with the veal.

The step that matters

Keep the gravy thickened to the right consistency. Flour thickens the liquid only as it is well mixed and heated, so a smooth butter-flour paste added to the kettle gives an even gravy; adding too much flour at once can leave lumps or a pasty texture.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, meat, white pepper, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, meat, white pepper, pepper, flour, butter. 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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