Name: Chicken Pie
Ingredients: 1 fat young chicken (6 to 8 months old); Royal Baking Powder (amount as needed); creamy sweet milk (amount as needed); butter (generous lumps); black pepper (to taste); coarse sea salt (to taste); water (from boiling chicken); dough for crust (made with Royal Baking Powder and creamy sweet milk)

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

Ingredients

1 fat young chicken (6 to 8 months old)
Royal Baking Powder (amount as needed)
creamy sweet milk (amount as needed)
butter (generous lumps)
black pepper (to taste)
coarse sea salt (to taste)
water (from boiling chicken)
dough for crust (made with Royal Baking Powder and creamy sweet milk)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Parboil the chicken until perfectly tender.
Grease the sides of a baking pan and line it with dough rolled to ¼ inch thick.
Layer the bottom of the pan with chicken, then add a layer of dumplings, followed by another layer of chicken.
Sprinkle black pepper and scatter generous lumps of butter over the layers.
If the chicken was not salted enough during parboiling, sprinkle in some coarse sea salt.
Add the water used to boil the chicken before covering with a perforated top crust to allow steam to escape.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,389 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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