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Chicken Pot-pie

A savory pie made with boiled chicken, potatoes, and a crust of flour, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the jointed chickens until tender, seasoning with butter, salt, and pepper.

Make the crust

  1. Beat the egg and mix it into the sour milk and cream (if using).

  2. Stir in flour, salt, and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the boiling chicken broth.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil for 30 minutes, being careful not to overcook the crust.

  2. Add diced potatoes before adding the crust.

  3. For a better crust, use light bread dough mixed with butter, let it rise, cut into squares, and layer with chicken until filled.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat and the broth that cooks the crust.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so it holds together while it cooks.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda so the dough rises.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas that lightens the dough.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes without overcooking the crust. Dumpling dough sets as its starch gelatinizes and the proteins firm up. Boiling too long makes the crust tough, gummy, and dense instead of light and tender.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, pepper, egg, milk, cream, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, egg, milk, cream, 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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