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Chicken and Turkey Patties

A baked patty made from minced chicken or turkey, coated with butter and flour, topped with gravy or pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 and Turkey Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble the filling

  1. In a pie dish, layer the minced chicken or turkey.

  2. If using, pour gravy over the meat; if not, line the dish with pie crust.

  3. In a bowl, mix butter and flour until combined, then dot over the meat.

  4. Pour water into the dish until nearly full.

  5. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and ground mace if desired.

Bake

  1. Cover with a pie crust and bake until the crust is golden brown.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Cold chicken or turkey
Forms the main body of the filling and supplies the savory meat flavour.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the meat so it does not dry out in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the crust.
Flour
Mixed with butter to thicken the juices into a looser sauce within the pie.

The step that matters

Covering and baking until golden. The pie crust must be sealed over the filling and baked until golden brown; browning comes from the crust's sugars and fats reacting with heat, and the filling needs enough time in the oven to heat through.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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