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Chicken Pie

A baked dish of chicken pieces covered with pastry and topped with butter and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint the chicken and place it in a kettle covered with water.

  2. Boil until tender, then cut into small pieces and remove the bones.

Make the pastry

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, lard, water, and salt to make the pastry.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with the pastry and sprinkle flour over the bottom crust.

  2. Add the chicken pieces, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, and more flour.

  3. Dot with bits of butter and pour gravy over the chicken.

  4. Cover with the remaining pastry, dot with butter, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 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. Flour + buttertop 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. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pastry and dusted on the bottom crust to help absorb juices.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the pastry tender and flaky.
Whole chicken
Provides the main filling, cooked until tender before assembly.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the topping and browns during baking.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. The chicken must be fully cooked through before it goes into the pie, since the baking time is short and mainly browns the crust. Removing the bones after boiling makes the filling safe and easy to eat.

“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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