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Baked Chicken Pie

A pie filled with stewed chicken and gravy, topped with a crust lid and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Baked Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Prepare and disjoint the chickens as for pot pie.

  2. Season the chickens with salt, black pepper, and a little cayenne.

  3. Dredge the chickens in flour.

  4. Stir the flour-coated chickens with enough water to cover them.

  5. Place the mixture in a stew pan over low heat.

  6. Let it stew for 45 minutes.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with a light pie crust.

  2. Arrange the chicken pieces evenly in the dish.

  3. Pour some of the gravy over the chicken.

  4. Roll out the lid for the pie.

  5. Place the lid on top, trimming the edges with a sharp knife.

  6. Cut a square opening in the center of the lid, about 3 inches each way.

  7. Turn up the corners of the opening.

  8. Cut strips of crust and lay them across the opening.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the size of the pie.

  2. Before serving, add the remaining gravy through the center opening.

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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

Chickens
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle stew.
Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the stewing liquid into a gravy.
Pie crust
Forms the encasing base and lid that hold the filling and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stewing the chicken over low heat. Gentle, low heat lets the connective tissue in the chicken break down slowly, so the meat turns tender without drying out. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can scorch the flour-thickened gravy.

“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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