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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with chicken, potatoes, and string beans topped with biscuit dough and served with custard, cream, bread, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 655 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. 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.

Prepare

  1. Cook the chicken until tender, then shred it.

  2. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  3. Steam the string beans until tender.

  4. Make a biscuit dough with flour and butter, then roll it out.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine chicken, potatoes, and beans in a baking dish.

  2. Pour custard over the mixture and top with biscuit dough.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, bread, and jelly on the side.

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. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + biscuittop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory filling that the pie is built around.
Potatoes
Mashed, they add body and moisture to the filling.
Biscuit flour
Forms the dough that sets and browns as a crust on top.
Butter
Adds fat to the biscuit dough, contributing tenderness and flavor.
Custard
Binds the filling with a set, creamy texture as it bakes.
String beans
Add texture and a fresh vegetable component to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough lets the custard set and the biscuit crust brown through; underbaking leaves a runny filling and pale, doughy topping, while overbaking dries the custard.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, potato, biscuit, flour, butter, sugar, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, potato, biscuit, flour, butter, sugar, 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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