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Chicken Pie

Boiled chicken served with a thickened butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove all fat from the chicken.

  2. Cut the chicken into pieces.

  3. Place the chicken in boiling water.

  4. Add pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Cook until the meat can be easily removed from the bones.

  6. Skim the water.

Make the gravy

  1. Cool the chicken.

  2. Pick the meat into small pieces, removing all bones.

  3. Leave about 1 quart of liquid in the kettle for gravy.

  4. Add enough flour to the liquid to make a thick gravy.

  5. Stir in the butter, adding more if a richer flavor is desired.

  6. Pour the gravy over the chicken and let cool.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 meat for the filling and the broth that becomes the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy by swelling with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to the liquid to make a thick gravy. Flour must be stirred into the liquid so it disperses evenly without lumps; starch thickens the gravy as it heats, so too little leaves it thin and too much makes it pasty.

“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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