Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Chicken Pie
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
Prepare the chicken as for stewed chicken.
Skim off all the fat after cooking the chicken.
Make a rich gravy by combining milk, butter, salt, pepper, and flour in a saucepan.
Prepare the pie crust as for pastry.
Assemble and bake
Line the pie pan with crust, add the chicken and gravy, then cover with a top crust.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,389 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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
- Flour
- Thickens the milk and butter into a rich gravy.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the gravy.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the gravy.
- Small bits of dough
- Form the crust that encloses the filling.
The step that matters
Make the gravy smooth before adding the chicken. Flour clumps if it is not whisked into the milk and butter evenly, and lumps stay in the gravy. Cooking it while stirring lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce.
“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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