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To Prepare and Cook a Chicken-pie

A baked chicken pie with layers of chicken, soaked Boston crackers, butter, and a cream‑flour gravy topped with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Prepare and Cook a 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. Procure a chicken and joint it.

  2. Simmer the chicken in 1½ pints of water until tender.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a dish with common paste and add a rim of puff-paste.

  2. Layer the chicken in the dish.

  3. Split the Boston crackers and soak them in milk until soft.

  4. Place a layer of soaked crackers on the chicken, adding a small piece of butter in the center of each.

  5. Continue layering chicken and crackers until the dish is filled.

  6. Strain the chicken gravy and heat it to boiling.

  7. Beat 2 eggs until light.

  8. Stir 1 tablespoon of flour into 1 pint of cream, then add the mixture to the gravy and boil briefly.

  9. Pour the gravy mixture over the chicken and crackers, then break 4 eggs on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pie with puff-paste and make a large slit in the crust.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Beaten and broken eggs set the custard-like filling and bind the gravy.
Boston crackers
Soaked crackers soften and absorb gravy, giving the pie a moist, tender texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, making it smooth and creamy.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the gravy becomes lightly body-rich rather than watery.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the crackers as the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and flour mixture to the gravy. Flour must be fully stirred into the cream before it goes into the hot gravy, and the mixture should boil briefly. Stirring it in smoothly and bringing it to a boil lets the starch thicken evenly, which prevents lumps and a thin, runny filling.

“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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