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Dessert

Chicken Pie Crust

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pie Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

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

  2. Add the lard and mix until crumbly.

  3. Moisten the mixture with sweet milk until it can be rolled out.

Laminate and finish

  1. Roll out the dough, spread with butter, fold it over, and roll it out 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the crust once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the crust rise and become lighter.
Lard
Coats flour particles to shorten gluten and give a tender, flaky texture.
Sweet milk
Moistens the flour so the dough holds together and can be rolled.
Butter
Adds fat between dough layers, helping create flakiness and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture. Add the milk gradually and stop once the dough holds together. Too much liquid or overworking develops gluten, making the crust tough instead of tender.

“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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