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Veal Pie

A savory pie with veal, onions, carrots, and a creamy gravy, topped with biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal and cold water; heat slowly.

  2. Remove scum as it begins to boil.

  3. Add onions, carrot cubes, and salt; simmer until very tender.

  4. Transfer meat to a deep baking dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the liquid down to 1½ cups, strain, and remove most of the fat.

  2. Stir in cream or milk and pepper; thicken with flour rubbed in butter.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, then strain over the meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with biscuit dough and bake for 1 hour, covered with thick paper.

  2. Uncover and brown 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Lean meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering, forming the body of the pie.
Flour
Rubbed into butter and stirred into the liquid, it thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour and texture.
Biscuit dough
Forms a rich crust over the filling that bakes and browns on top.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Remove most of the fat before thickening. Fat that rises to the surface of the reduced liquid can make the sauce greasy and keep the flour from thickening it smoothly. Skimming it off first gives a cleaner, silkier sauce.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, cream, pepper, flour, butter, biscuit):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, cream, pepper, flour, butter, biscuit. 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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