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 Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Make the gravy
Boil the chicken until tender, then remove the meat.
Simmer the gravy until reduced to 1 pint.
Add 3 pints of milk, ½ pound of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, and ¼ teaspoon of salt to the gravy. Bring the mixture to a boil.
Assemble and bake
For the crust, mix ¼ cup of sour milk with ¼ cup of butter, a little baking soda, and enough flour to make a nice paste.
Line a tin pan with the crust. Add the chicken meat to the pan. Pour the gravy over the chicken.
Cover with a top crust, leaving a vent. Bake for 2½ hours.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,389 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 becomes tender through long simmering in the gravy.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the gravy, giving it body and a creamy, rich texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and flavor in both the gravy and the crust.
- Flour
- Thickens the gravy and gives the crust structure as it binds with the fat and liquid.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the crust rise and turn tender.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the crust.
The step that matters
Reducing the gravy to 1 pint. Simmering concentrates the gravy and thickens it through evaporation. If it is under-reduced, the filling will be thin and may make the crust soggy during baking.
“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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