Name: Oyster Pie with Chicken
Ingredients: 1 good sized chicken; 1 quart oysters; coarse sea salt; pepper; bits of butter; chicken liquor; pie crust

Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Oyster Pie with Chicken

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.

Prepare

Boil the chicken until tender, then drain the liquor from the oysters.
Line the sides and bottom of a large round pan with pie crust.

Assemble and bake

Layer the chicken in the pan until full, seasoning with pepper, salt, bits of butter, oyster liquor, and some chicken liquor.
Cover with more pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Serve

Serve with sliced lemon.

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.

Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together972 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Forms the main filling, providing the savory meat that the pie is built around.
Oysters: Add a briny, savory flavor to the filling.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns to a golden, crisp shell in the oven.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during baking.

“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.