Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pot-Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, ham or salt pork, optional potatoes, and pastry crusts, baked slowly in a pot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Chicken Pot-Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Grease the bottom and sides of a pot generously with butter.

  2. Line the pot with a rich pastry.

  3. Reserve some pastry for the top crust and scatter small pieces in the pie.

Layer the filling

  1. Layer the ham or salt pork in the pot.

  2. Season the ham with salt and pepper.

  3. Add pieces of chicken.

  4. If using potatoes, parboil them.

  5. Layer the parboiled potatoes next to the pastry squares.

  6. Continue layering with more pork and chicken until all ingredients are used.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the filling with thick pastry.

  2. Make a slit in the middle of the top pastry.

  3. Heat slowly and boil for 2 hours.

  4. Turn the pot-pie into a large dish.

  5. Place the lower crust on top and pour the gravy around it.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and savory flavor of the filling.
Ham or salt pork
Adds salty, savory flavor and fat to the filling.
Pastry
Forms the rich crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the filling, thickening it as they cook.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and boil for 2 hours. Long, gentle cooking lets the chicken become tender and the connective tissue break down into gelatin, while the pastry bakes through. Heating too hard can toughen the meat and leave the filling unevenly cooked.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes