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Grandmother's Chicken Pot-pie

A baked chicken pot pie with a pastry crust made from sour cream, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Grandmother's Chicken Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Catch the chickens.

  2. Prepare the chickens by scalding, plucking, and dressing them.

  3. Wash the chickens several times.

  4. Soak the chickens in a saltwater solution for 30 minutes.

  5. Place the chickens in a deep kettle with enough cold water to cover them.

  6. Allow the chickens to simmer slowly for 1 hour.

Make the pastry

  1. Make a rich pastry by mixing sour cream and baking soda with flour until a dough forms.

  2. Roll out the dough into thin sheets.

  3. Cut the dough into squares.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the chicken and broth to a baking dish.

  2. Cover the dish with the pastry squares.

  3. 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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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

Young male chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pastry a tender, rich texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to lighten the dough and promote browning.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure of the pastry dough that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Simmer the chicken slowly. Slow, gentle simmering keeps the meat tender and allows collagen in the connective tissue to break down into gelatin. A rapid boil toughens the proteins and leaves the meat stringy.

“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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