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Chicken Pot-pie

A savory dish of simmered chicken, salt pork, and onion, topped with a crust of biscuit dough or pie paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Place the chicken, salt pork, minced onion, and pepper in a wide saucepan.

  2. Add enough cold water to cover the contents well.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours.

Make the crust

  1. Prepare a round crust from biscuit dough or pie-paste to fit the pot and lay it over the chicken.

  2. Heat a stove shovel until red hot and brown the crust by holding it over the pot.

  3. Carefully remove the crust and keep it warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the chicken to a warm dish.

  2. Bring the remaining gravy to a hard boil.

  3. Drop squares of pie-paste into the boiling gravy and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the squares and arrange them around the chicken.

  5. Thicken the gravy with 1 tablespoon of butter rolled in flour.

  6. Pour the thickened gravy over the chicken.

  7. Place the baked crust on top.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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 meat and, as it simmers, the flavourful broth that becomes the gravy.
Salt pork
Adds savoury fat and salty flavour to the simmering broth.
Biscuit dough or pie-paste
Forms the crust that is browned and the squares cooked in the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the chicken rather than staying thin.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Adding flour directly to hot liquid forms lumps; rolling butter in flour first lets it disperse smoothly, and the gravy must be boiling so the starch swells and thickens fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, pepper, biscuit, butter, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, pepper, biscuit, butter, 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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