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Chicken Pot Pie

A savory pie with chicken, ham or salt pork, potatoes, suet and flour, baked in a buttery crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Pot Pie

Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the cut‑up fowls with pepper.

  2. Make a paste with the suet and flour; roll it out to 1 inch thick and cut into long squares.

Assemble and cook

  1. Grease the pot generously with butter and line it with the paste.

  2. Layer the bottom with slices of ham or pork, then add the fowl pieces and squares of paste, interspersed with parboiled potatoes.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of water and cover with a lid of paste, making a slit in the center.

  4. Heat slowly and boil for 2 hours.

  5. Half an hour before serving, add bits of butter rolled in flour through the slit to thicken the gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve the pie on a large dish and pour the gravy over it.

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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Suet
Forms the rich paste that lines and covers the pie, adding fat and tenderness.
Flour
Builds the paste structure and, mixed with butter, thickens the gravy.
Fowl
Provides the meat that cooks slowly in the pot to become tender.
Butter
Greases the pot and, rolled in flour, adds richness and thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and boil for 2 hours. Tough fowl needs long, gentle simmering so connective tissue breaks down and the meat becomes tender. Boiling too hard can toughen the meat and break up the paste.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, ham, butter. 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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