Why it works: Flour and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Chicken Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Make the gravy
Stew the chicken in plenty of water until tender, ensuring there is at least 1 quart of gravy.
Remove the chicken from the kettle and leave the gravy.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour into the gravy to thicken it.
Assemble and bake
Once cool, remove the meat from the bones and place it in a baking pan lined with a rich biscuit crust about ⅓ inch thick.
Pour 1 to 2 cups of the thickened gravy over the meat.
Cover with a perforated upper crust and bake until golden brown.
Serve hot.
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.
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Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together889 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + biscuittop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together332 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Chicken
- Provides the meat that becomes tender through stewing and forms the pie's filling.
- Flour
- Thickens the gravy so it holds together and coats the meat rather than running out.
- Rich biscuit crust
- Forms the pastry base and top that hold the filling and brown in the oven.
The step that matters
Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour must be stirred into the hot gravy evenly so starch granules swell and thicken it. Added unevenly or in lumps, it leaves pockets of raw flour and an uneven gravy that will not set properly around the meat.
“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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