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Chicken Pot Pie

A savory pie with chicken, pork, butter, cream, and a biscuit crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Chicken Pot Pie

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Pot 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.

Prepare and layer

  1. Boil the chicken pieces for about 20 minutes until partially cooked, then remove from water.

  2. Fry the salt pork slices in a pan.

  3. Place the fried pork slices at the bottom of a pie dish.

  4. Add the chicken pieces on top of the pork.

  5. Pour 1 cup of water over the chicken and pork.

  6. Add the butter, salt, and pepper.

Bake

  1. Cover the mixture with a biscuit-style crust.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is risen and brown.

  3. Cover the pie with paper to prevent burning while baking through.

Make and serve the gravy

  1. Remove excess fat from the boiling water.

  2. Thicken the liquid with flour and season to taste.

  3. Stir in the heavy cream.

  4. Pour the gravy through the holes in the crust once the pie is done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which partly cooks first and finishes in the oven.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the base of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich gravy.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Partially cooking the chicken. The chicken only partly cooks before baking because it finishes in the oven. Boiling it fully first can dry the meat out, while underdone chicken is unsafe to eat.

“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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