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Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with chicken, gravy, butter, lard, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut up the chicken and place it in a pot with enough water to make gravy.

  2. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and mace to the pot.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the lard, butter, a little water, and a pinch of salt to form a paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then stir the yolks into the chicken mixture.

  2. Fill a pie crust with the chicken mixture and bake 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 meat and, simmered with water, the body of the gravy.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the paste, making it tender and flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the paste brown in the oven.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling as the yolks are stirred into it.

The step that matters

Boil the eggs until hard. Eggs boiled until fully set keep their yolks firm enough to stir in and slice neatly. Undercooked whites stay runny and can make the filling watery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, 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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