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Chicken Roly-poly

A steamed pastry filled with seasoned minced meat, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Roly-poly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Roll out the mixture to a thickness of half an inch.

Fill and steam

  1. Spread the minced meat evenly over the dough and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Roll the dough over the filling tightly and place it on a buttered plate.

  3. Steam for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve slices with gravy for breakfast or lunch.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the filling inside the roll.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda to lighten it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that helps it rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Minced chicken, veal, or mutton
Provides the savory filling that gives the roll its main flavor and moisture.

The step that matters

Roll the dough over the filling tightly. A loose roll can open or leave air gaps during steaming, so the filling may spill out or cook unevenly. A snug, even roll keeps the filling enclosed and the texture consistent.

“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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