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Dessert

Chicken Pie Crust

A dough for a chicken pie crust made with flour, baking powder, salt, lard, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Pie Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Cut in lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Gradually add sweet milk until the dough is moist enough to roll.

Roll and finish

  1. Roll out the dough, spread with butter, fold it over, and roll again.

  2. The crust is now ready to use for the pie.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 gluten network that gives the crust its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts with moisture and heat, lifting the crust.
Lard
Coats flour particles and melts in the oven, making the crust tender and flaky.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and can be rolled.

The step that matters

Gradually add sweet milk until the dough is moist enough to roll. Adding liquid slowly lets you stop once the dough holds together. Too much liquid or excess handling develops gluten, making the crust 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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