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Chicken Potpie

A savory dish of chicken and potatoes baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Potpie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour with enough water to form a stiff dough, similar to pie crust.

  2. Roll out the dough and cut it into 3-inch squares.

Assemble the pot

  1. In a large iron pot, add a little cold water to the bottom.

  2. Layer the chicken pieces around the inside of the pot, leaving an opening in the center.

  3. Place a layer of dough over the chicken, season with salt, pepper, and butter.

Simmer

  1. Add enough water to cover the chicken and simmer for 2 hours.

  2. When nearly done, add diced potatoes to the pot.

  3. Place larger bony pieces at the bottom to prevent burning.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory meat flavor of the filling.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough that becomes the crust, giving structure to the pot pie.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor to the dough and seasoning.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch that adds body to the filling.

The step that matters

Add enough water to cover the chicken and simmer for 2 hours. Covering the chicken with water and cooking it at a gentle simmer cooks the meat through slowly. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and dry out the chicken.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Leekfits less well

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