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Chicken Pie

A pie with cooked, boned, seasoned chicken, covered with a crust and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Rub in lard and butter until well combined.

  3. Moisten with cold water to form a dough.

Assemble the pie

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thickness and line the sides of a baking dish.

  2. Place the cooked, boned, and seasoned chicken in the dish.

  3. Fill the dish halfway with broth and add bits of butter.

  4. Sprinkle heavily with flour.

  5. Cover with a top crust, tucking the edges under.

  6. Cut several gashes in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  3. Flour + chickentop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough and thickens the broth as the pie bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and becomes light.
Lard and butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crust and keeps it flaky.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling, already cooked and seasoned.
Broth
Adds moisture and flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Cut several gashes in the top crust. Steam builds up inside the sealed pie as it bakes. Without vents it can make the top crust soggy or lift it unevenly, so the gashes let steam escape.

“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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