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Chicken Pie

A pie filled with boiled chicken, vegetables, and creamy gravy, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

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.

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken in a pot and cover with warm water.

  2. Add salt, peppercorns, onion, celery, carrot, and turnip.

  3. Cook slowly for 2 hours until the meat separates from the bones.

  4. Boil the broth down to 2 cups.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter. Stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the broth until smooth. Stir in the cream.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove most of the chicken from the bones, leaving a few small bones. Layer chicken in a baking dish.

  2. Add a layer of gravy. Place the breast bone in the center to support the crust. Continue layering chicken and gravy.

  3. Cover with a ¾-inch thick crust, cutting a slit for steam. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and, through slow cooking, the flavourful broth.
Butter
Melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Combines with the melted butter to thicken the gravy.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, reduced for concentrated flavour.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and the broth added gradually while stirring, otherwise the gravy can turn lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, cream. 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.

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