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Chicken Roly-poly

A rolled pastry of minced meat in a flour dough, steamed and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Chicken Roly-poly

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the flour mixture.

  3. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

Fill and steam

  1. Spread the minced meat over the dough and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Roll the dough over the filling and place it on a buttered plate.

  3. Steam for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve slices with gravy.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the filling inside the roll.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so the baking soda reacts and helps it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas for lift.
Milk
Adds moisture to bind the dough and softens its texture.
Minced chicken, veal, or mutton
Provides the savory filling that is rolled inside the dough.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick. Even thickness lets the roll cook through evenly during steaming. Dough that is too thin can tear around the filling, and dough that is too thick may stay doughy in the center.

“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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