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Chicken Pie

A savory pie of stewed chicken and oysters in a buttery milk sauce, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the chicken until tender.

  2. Line the sides of a deep pie dish with pastry.

  3. Place the chicken in the dish and add the water it boiled in.

  4. Season the chicken with butter, salt, and pepper.

  5. Cover the pie loosely with a crust.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until boiling.

  2. Thicken the milk with a little flour.

  3. Season the thickened milk with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Pour the hot mixture over the oysters.

Bake and serve

  1. About 15 minutes before the pie is done, lift the crust.

  2. Pour the oysters into the pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven to finish baking.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the pie, becoming tender from stewing.
Oysters
Supply the briny, savory flavor that defines the pie.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that becomes the sauce once thickened.
Flour
Starch swells when heated with milk, thickening it into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven as a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour. Flour must be mixed in well while the milk is hot so its starch can swell evenly. This gives a smooth sauce instead of lumps or a thin liquid that soaks the crust.

“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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