Why it works: Butternut and biscuit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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 pie
Prepare the crust like a baking powder biscuit, but a little shorter.
Roll it out to half an inch thick and line a 4-quart pie pan.
Place the pieces of chicken smoothly in the pan.
Sprinkle salt, pepper, and a little flour over the chicken.
Add a piece of butter the size of a butternut.
Pour a little of the liquor from boiling the chickens over the top.
Roll out the top crust to more than half an inch thick and cut air holes in it.
Bake and serve
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is thoroughly done.
Thicken and season the remaining liquor from boiling the chickens and serve with the pie.
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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Butternut + biscuittop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together4 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Flour + butternuttop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together37 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together889 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together841 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Chicken
- Provides the main filling, which stays moist and tender from the boiling liquor.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist and flavourful.
- Flour
- Lightly coats the chicken and helps thicken the juices in the filling.
- Crust
- Forms the structure that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Bake until the crust is thoroughly done. A pale or underbaked crust stays doughy on the bottom and top. Baking until fully browned sets the flour and fat into a crisp, cooked structure.
Swap the butternut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, flour, butter, biscuit):
- Almondfits better
- Cashew nutfits about as well
- Pistachiofits about as well
- Butternutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, butter, 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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