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Veal Pot-pie

A pot pie of veal with 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 and remove the scum.

  3. Add a teacup of cold water.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, remembering the crust will absorb some seasoning.

  5. Cut the crust into equal pieces without rolling.

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

  7. Cover the pot tightly and let it boil slowly for 1 hour, ensuring steam does not escape.

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour, butter, a little salt, and enough milk to form a soft dough.

  2. Knead the dough well.

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

  4. Add baking soda during the second kneading in summer, if desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a buttered basin with pie paste.

  2. Fill the basin with parboiled veal.

  3. Add butter pieces, pepper and flour.

  4. Cover with a puff pastry crust and cut slits for steam.

  5. Bake until 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. 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.
Flour
Forms the dough structure and thickens the filling as the crust cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crust, and helps browning in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture to the flour so it forms a soft, workable dough.

The step that matters

Cover the pot tightly and boil slowly for 1 hour. Keeping the lid sealed holds heat and moisture in, so the veal cooks gently in its own liquid. Lost steam can dry the meat and let the boil run too hard.

“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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