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Chicken Pds

A chicken pie with a pie crust and seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Pds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the legs and wings off the chicken.

  2. Cut the breast into four pieces.

  3. Separate the backbone.

  4. Clean the liver and gizzard.

  5. Wash everything in cold water.

  6. In a small saucepan, fry the pork slices. Once fried, add the chicken and 1 pint of water.

  7. Let it boil for 20 minutes.

  8. Remove the chicken from the saucepan.

Make the pie crust

  1. To make the pie crust, mix the butter and lard in a bowl with a knife until well combined. Add the sifted flour and mix well.

  2. Wet the mixture with ice water until it comes together.

  3. Roll it out and fold it over itself two or three times to create a flaky crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out a thin strip of pie crust and place it around the sides of a pie dish. Lay the chicken in the dish.

  2. Season the gravy with pepper, salt, and a little sweet marjoram or mace. Pour the gravy over the chicken and cover with a top crust.

  3. Wet the edges of the crust with cold water to help it adhere. Cut a small slit in the top crust to allow steam to escape while baking.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

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

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

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + marjoramtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, which becomes tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Butter and lard
Fats that keep the pie crust tender and create flaky layers as they melt in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pie crust once mixed with liquid.
Fat pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding richness and flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Wet the mixture with ice water until it comes together. Cold water keeps the fat in small pieces, so steam from them lifts the dough into flakes; too much water makes the crust tough.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Marjoramthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

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