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Chicken Pot Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, potatoes, and a dough crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Pot Pie

Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour, lard, and a little salt in a bowl.

  2. Add cold water gradually to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and line a pie pan with it.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then remove from water.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chicken and potatoes alternately in the pie pan.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Cover with the remaining dough and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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 + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and fat.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and flaky.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the filling.
Potatoes
Add starch that thickens the filling and gives it bulk.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water to the dough. Adding water gradually and keeping it cold limits gluten development and keeps the fat solid, so the crust stays tender and flaky rather than tough.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, chicken, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, chicken, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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