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Chicken or Fowl Pie

A pie made with chicken or fowl, ham, forcemeat, hard‑boiled eggs, spices, and puff crust, baked with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken or Fowl Pie

7 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Skin and cut up the fowls into joints.

  2. Put the neck, leg, and backbones in a stewpan with a little water, an onion, a bunch of savoury herbs, and a blade of mace. Let them stew for about an hour.

  3. When done, strain off the liquor; this is for gravy.

Layer and cover

  1. Put a layer of fowl at the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Add a layer of ham on top.

  3. Add a layer of forcemeat and hard-boiled eggs cut into rings.

  4. Sprinkle between the layers a seasoning of pounded mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  5. Continue layering until the dish is full.

  6. Pour in about 1/2 pint of water.

  7. Border the edge of the dish with puff crust.

  8. Cover the pie.

  9. Ornament the top.

  10. Glaze with the yolk of an egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hour (if the pie is very large).

  2. Cover with a piece of paper when about half-done to prevent drying or scorching.

  3. When done, pour the bone gravy over the top.

  4. If serving cold, bone the joints and layer them alternately with forcemeat; sausage meat may replace forcemeat.

  5. When using boned meat and sausage or forcemeat, bake for about 2 hours.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

344Calories
34 gProtein
21 gFat
4 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 8 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Pork100g cooked242
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Fowls
Provide the main meat, which cooks through in the pie and forms the body of the filling.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the layers between the fowl and eggs.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliced texture to the layered filling.
Forcemeat (in the method)
Binds the layers together and adds a moist, seasoned body to the pie.
Puff crust (in the method)
Forms the rich, flaky, browned casing that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Cover the pie when about half-done. Covering with paper partway through slows surface browning and drying, so the crust and meat stay moist and do not scorch while the filling cooks through.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, mace, ham, egg):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, mace, ham, egg. 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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