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 Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the chicken
Stew the chicken until tender and season it.
Thicken the gravy and remove from heat.
Take out the largest bones and scrape the meat from the neck and backbone.
Assemble the pie
Line a 4 or 6-quart pudding dish with biscuit dough, about ¼ inch thick.
Add part of the chicken, butter, salt, pepper, and sliced boiled eggs.
Add the remaining chicken and season again.
Optionally, add new potatoes.
Pour the gravy over the mixture, ensuring the dish is filled.
Cover with a ¼ inch thick crust with a hole in the center the size of a teacup.
Bake and serve
Brush the top with beaten egg white and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.
Garnish with small celery leaves arranged in a circle.
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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Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,756 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
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Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,305 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together137 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together841 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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 slow stewing and forms the body of the filling.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts into the chicken and gravy.
- Eggs
- Boiled eggs add firm texture and body to the filling, and the beaten white gives the crust a glossy browned finish.
- Biscuit dough
- Forms a sturdy crust that holds the filling and rises and browns in the oven.
- Gravy
- Thickened with starch, it binds the filling and keeps the chicken moist during baking.
The step that matters
Thicken the gravy and remove from heat. Gravy must be thick enough before baking, because starch thickens further only with heat and a thin gravy will run out of the pie and leave the filling soggy.
Swap the potato
The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, pepper, egg, biscuit):
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Spinachfits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, egg, biscuit. 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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