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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with stewed chicken, gravy thickened with flour and milk, topped with biscuit dough.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the chicken into small pieces.

  2. Stew the chicken until tender, adding water as needed to keep it covered.

  3. Season with butter, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with milk.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a cup upside down in the center of a deep baking dish.

  2. Pour the chicken and gravy into the dish and cover with biscuit dough.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until golden brown.

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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 filling, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the milk and stock gravy so it holds together around the chicken.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the gravy, softening its texture as it thickens.
Egg
Enriches the gravy and helps bind it, adding richness and colour.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the seasoned filling.
Biscuit dough
Forms a crust that rises and browns in the oven over the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with milk. Flour must be blended smoothly with milk before it meets the hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens the gravy only once it is evenly dispersed and heated.

“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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