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Mock Chicken Pie

A veal pie with a biscuit crust, made by stewing veal with onion, carrot, cream, and butter, then topping with biscuits.

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

Mock Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the veal into pieces and stew until tender with pepper, salt, onion, and carrot.

  2. Remove all bones and vegetables from the stew.

  3. Add cream and butter to the meat mixture.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour and water, then transfer to a baking dish.

Top and bake

  1. Roll out the baking powder biscuits to 1 inch thick and cover the top of the dish.

  2. Bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the biscuits are golden.

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. Pepper + carrottop 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

Breast ends of the ribs of veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during stewing and forms the body of the pie.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor in the meat mixture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a stable, spoonable filling.
Rich baking powder biscuits
Form a light, golden crust that rises and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and water. Flour must be cooked to thicken properly; if the mixture is not thickened well, the filling will run thin and soak the biscuit topping. Stirring the flour in smoothly before transferring to the dish helps prevent lumps and gives a consistent filling.

Swap the carrot

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

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

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