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Chicken Pot Pie

A dough roll steamed with chicken and served in its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Pot Pie

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 Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix sour milk, sour cream, baking soda, and salt until a stiff dough forms.

  2. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

Roll and steam

  1. Spread a little butter on the dough, then spread flour on the dough.

  2. Roll the dough up.

  3. Place the rolled dough in a steamer.

  4. Steam for one hour over the chicken.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Make a rich gravy with the chicken.

  2. Remove the chicken.

  3. Slice the steamed roll.

  4. Lay the sliced roll in the gravy for a few minutes before 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the dough tender and rich.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk and sour cream to make the dough rise.
Butter
Spread on the dough to add richness and help layers separate during rolling.
Flour
Dusted on the dough to keep it from sticking during rolling.

The step that matters

Steaming the rolled dough for one hour. Steam must be kept steady and the roll must not be packed too tightly, since the dough rises and sets as it cooks. Uneven or interrupted steam can leave the roll dense or gummy in the centre.

“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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