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Chicken Potpie

A chicken dish cooked in a pot and topped with drop dumplings made from flour, baking powder, eggs and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Potpie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumpling batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and combine with the milk.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture until well combined.

Finish the pot pie

  1. Remove the pot from the stove to let it cool slightly.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pot 20 minutes before the chicken 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.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings as it sets with heat.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the dumplings.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pot 20 minutes before the chicken is done.. Dumplings need time to steam through and set in the simmering liquid. Dropping them too early can overcook them, while adding them too late leaves them raw in the centre.

“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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