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Chicken Shortcake

A savory cake made from stewed chicken, gravy, flour, butter, and baked with a dough topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint and stew the fowls until tender, seasoning well with pepper.

  2. Remove the flesh from the bones, discarding fat, skin, sinew, and gristle.

  3. Return the meat to the gravy and let it cool, then skim off the fat.

  4. Pour the gravy into a saucepan, flavor with coarse sea salt, celery salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour until smooth, then mix with a little gravy.

  6. Combine this mixture with the gravy and boil until thickened, stirring constantly.

  7. If desired, add a small onion to the fowls during boiling, then remove it before cooling.

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder, then rub in the butter.

  2. Add milk to form a soft dough, roll out to fit your platter, and bake until done.

  3. Cut the remaining dough into small rounds and bake alongside.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, split the large cake, butter it, and layer the chicken on one half.

  2. Cover with the other half and pour the gravy over the top.

  3. Arrange the small biscuits around the edge of the platter for garnish.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Fowls
Provide the tender meat that forms the filling and gravy base.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and gives the dough structure for a sturdy, tender cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the dough so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and enriches the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the gravy. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps, so it must first be blended smoothly into melted butter and a little gravy. Constant stirring while boiling keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened as the starch swells.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, butter, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, butter, flour, egg, milk. 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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