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Chicken Pie

A baked dish of boiled chicken, onions, parsley, butter, eggs, and cream encased in a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Disjoint the chickens and cut the backbone into small pieces.

  2. Boil the chickens with salt pork in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Remove the breast bone and skim off any scum.

Make the filling

  1. Add finely chopped onion and parsley for flavor, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Stir in a few ounces of butter and ensure there is enough liquid to cover the chicken.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix in sweet cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a 5-quart pan with a rich crust, add the chicken and liquid, then cover with another crust.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is done.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 boiling and forms the body of the pie.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a sliceable texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the filling.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the filling smooth and tender.
Crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven, giving a rich, sturdy top and base.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is done. Baking too briefly leaves the crust pale, soggy, and underset, while overbaking can dry the filling. Watching for a golden, fully set crust protects both texture and moisture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, onion, pepper, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, onion, pepper, butter, egg, 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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