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Chicken Pie

A baked chicken pie with a sour cream and flour batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces for stewing.

  2. Steam the chicken pieces until tender.

  3. Place the chicken in a deep dish with plenty of gravy, salt, pepper, and butter.

Make the batter and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the sour cream, a pinch of salt, and baking soda dissolved in the cream with enough flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Pour the batter evenly over the chicken.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. Reserve some gravy for serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and helps form a rich, tender batter topping.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream to produce gas that lightens the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the sour cream into a batter that holds its shape over the chicken.
Whole chicken
Provides the main protein, which is steamed until tender before baking.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the cream. Baking soda needs to be evenly dispersed in the sour cream before mixing with flour. Uneven distribution leaves pockets of bitter, unreacted soda and patchy rising in the batter.

“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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