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Chicken Roly-poly

A rolled dough filled with minced chicken, veal, or mutton, steamed and 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. Mix flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add milk and combine to form a dough.

  3. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick.

Fill and roll

  1. Spread the minced meat evenly over the dough.

  2. Season the meat with pepper and salt.

  3. Roll the dough over the filling tightly.

  4. Place the rolled dough on a buttered plate.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 30 minutes until cooked through.

  2. Slice the cooked roll.

  3. Serve with gravy.

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and gives the roll its body.
Cream of tartar
Acidic powder that reacts with baking soda to help the dough rise.
Baking soda
Alkaline leavening that reacts with the acid to produce gas and lighten the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a pliable dough and adds tenderness.
Minced chicken, veal, or mutton
Provides the savoury filling that cooks through inside the rolled dough.

The step that matters

Roll the dough over the filling tightly. A tight roll keeps the filling compact and even, so the meat cooks through evenly during steaming and the slices hold together. Loose rolling can leave gaps and uneven texture.

“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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