Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the chicken
Boil the jointed chickens in 2 quarts of water.
Add a few slices of salt pork and season with coarse sea salt.
When nearly cooked, prepare a crust by mixing 1 quart of flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon of salt, then stir in enough water to form a stiff batter.
Add the crust and finish
Drop the batter into the boiling kettle.
Cover tightly and cook for 25 minutes.
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.
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Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,417 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,559 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,187 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the crust once mixed with water and cooked.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the crust rises and becomes light.
- Salt pork
- Adds savoury fat and flavour to the cooking liquid.
- Chickens
- Provide the main meat and flavour for the broth.
The step that matters
Drop the batter into the boiling kettle. The batter must be stiff enough to hold its shape in the simmering liquid. A thin batter spreads and dissolves into the broth instead of forming dumplings. Keeping the liquid at a steady boil while covering tightly lets the dumplings cook through with steam.
“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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