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Chicken Pie

A pie made with chicken, ham or bacon, pepper, salt, mace, and jelly gravy, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with chopped ham or bacon.

  2. Layer chicken joints in the dish, seasoning with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is filled.

  4. Cover the top with more ham or bacon.

  5. Fill the dish with jelly gravy.

Bake

  1. Cover with pie crust and bake until the chicken is tender, about 1 hour.

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 + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Ham + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,050 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 structure and savoury flavour that the pie is built around.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and some fat that enriches the filling.
Jelly gravy
Supplies moisture and body that keeps the layered meat from drying out as it bakes.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling, holding in steam and browning on the top surface in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until the chicken is tender. Heat must penetrate the thick layers of joints to cook the meat through and soften its connective tissue. Pulling the pie early leaves the chicken underdone or tough, so check that the meat is fully tender before serving.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, pepper. 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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