Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pot Pie

A boiled chicken dish with a batter crust, seasoned with salt pork, butter, pepper, and a dressing of egg yolks and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in 2 quarts of water with salt pork until nearly cooked.

  2. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt; add water to form a stiff batter.

  3. Drop the batter into the boiling kettle, cover, and cook for 25 minutes.

  4. Remove the chicken and place in a dripping pan with a little water; season with butter, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Chop the chicken meat, removing bones and skin; mix with chopped celery.

  2. Prepare the dressing by rubbing yolks of hard boiled eggs with salt, pepper, and sugar; add melted butter gradually.

  3. Pour the dressing over the chicken mixture and garnish with egg whites cut into rings.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the stiff batter that cooks into the dumplings, giving the pot pie its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the dumplings light and risen rather than dense.
Hard boiled eggs
Egg yolks are mashed into the dressing, adding richness and binding it smoothly.
Melted butter
Added gradually to the egg yolk dressing, adding fat and a smooth, rich texture.
Chickens
Provide the main meat, cooked first in water to become tender and flavorful broth.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into the boiling kettle and cover. The batter must cook in a steadily boiling liquid while covered, so steam sets the dumplings through. If the liquid stops boiling or the lid lifts too often, the dumplings may turn heavy or undercooked 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes