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Chicken Turnovers

Savory pastry filled with finely chopped cold roast chicken, seasoned and bound with flour, then fried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Turnovers

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the cold roast chicken very fine.

  2. In a saucepan, moisten the chicken with a little water and gravy or a piece of butter.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Add 2 teaspoons of sifted flour dissolved in a little water and heat through.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll out the plain pie crust thinly and cut into rounds the size of a saucer.

  2. Wet the edges with cold water and place a large spoonful of the chicken mixture on one half.

  3. Fold the other half over and pinch the edges together.

  4. Fry in hot fat until golden brown or bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Cold roast chicken
Provides the main filling, which is chopped fine so it binds and bites softly.
Gravy or butter
Adds moisture and richness so the chopped chicken stays juicy rather than dry.
Sifted flour
Thickens the moistened filling so it holds together inside the pastry.
Plain pie crust
Forms the outer shell that encloses the filling and browns during cooking.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before shaping. A hot, loose filling softens the pastry and can burst or leak through the edges during frying or baking. Cooling lets the thickened mixture firm up so the turnovers seal cleanly.

“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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