Name: Chicken Pie
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; coarse sea salt; black pepper; ½ cup cream; 2 tablespoons flour; small potatoes; baking powder biscuit dough

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

Stew the chicken until tender, then remove it from the pot.
In the pot, add coarse sea salt, black pepper, cream, and flour; bring to a boil.
In a baking dish, place the back of the chicken, wings, and small pieces of potato.
Pour some of the gravy over the chicken and potatoes.
Roll out the baking powder biscuit dough to ½ inch thick and cover the chicken.
Add the remaining chicken pieces and cover again with dough.

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.

Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,756 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together137 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the potato

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

Arrowrootfits better
Spinachfits better
Okrafits about as well
Potatothe original

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