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Paste for Chicken Pie

A dough made from flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, butter, lard, and sweet milk, used as a crust for chicken pie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Paste for Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Rub the butter and lard into the dry ingredients until very fine.

  3. Add enough sweet milk to form a moderately soft dough.

Fill the crust

  1. Line a deep baking dish with the dough.

  2. Fill the dish with the cold mixture and cover.

Bake

  1. Bake for an hour or more at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make several air holes in the top crust to prevent the pie from becoming poisonous.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the crust once mixed with liquid.
Cream of tartar
Acts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the crust.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid cream of tartar to help the crust rise.
Butter
Coats flour particles to shorten gluten and add tenderness and richness.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and helps it separate into flaky layers.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture binds into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter and lard into the dry ingredients. Fat must be worked in until very fine so it coats the flour particles. This limits gluten development, keeping the crust tender rather than tough.

“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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