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Chicken Pot Pie

A stew of chicken, onions, potatoes, carrot, celery, covered with a plain paste and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Pot Pie

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Prepare the chicken and stew it with the onions, potatoes, carrot, and celery until almost done.

  2. Season the stew with salt and pepper.

Top and finish

  1. Roll out a plain paste, a little stiffer than for dumplings.

  2. Lay the paste on top of the stew, cover, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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 savoury flavour as it stews into the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the stew.
Potatoes
Thicken the stew slightly as their starch breaks down during cooking.
Flour
Forms the paste that covers the stew and sets as it cooks.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste. A paste a little stiffer than dumpling dough holds its shape over the stew and cooks through without becoming soggy from the moisture below.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, potato, carrot, celery, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, potato, carrot, celery, 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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