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Chicken Pie with Sweet Potatoes

A savory pie of chicken and sweet potatoes baked in a biscuit crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Pie with Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Place the chicken pieces in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, skimming as necessary.

  2. Add the sweet potatoes and stew until both the chicken and potatoes are tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a large pie dish lined with biscuit crust, layer the chicken and sweet potatoes alternately.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then pour in the gravy from stewing.

  3. Cover with another layer of crust, making a hole in the top for steam to escape.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the crust is 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. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + sweet potatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main savory meat and the stewing liquid that becomes the gravy.
Sweet potatoes
Add body, natural sweetness and a soft, starchy filling that holds the layers together.
Pie crust
Forms the enclosing shell and top that bakes to a golden, crisp finish.

The step that matters

Stewing until both chicken and potatoes are tender. Potatoes and chicken cook at different rates, and the pie is baked only briefly. If either is undercooked when assembled, it stays firm in the oven, so both must be fully tender before layering.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, 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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