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Chicken Pie

A baked chicken pie with a butter‑flour crust and creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in cold water, covered, until you have 4 cups of broth.

  2. When the chicken is half cooked, add coarse sea salt to taste and finish cooking.

  3. Remove the chicken from the bones in large pieces, including a little skin.

  4. Place the chicken in the bottom of a baking dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, mix melted butter, flour, and pepper.

  2. Add 4 cups of warm broth to the mixture and cook well.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of cream or rich milk.

  4. Cover the chicken with this sauce, reserving some for gravy.

Make the crust and bake

  1. For the crust, mix baking powder, salt, and shortening into the flour.

  2. Add the beaten egg and 1 cup of milk to the flour mixture and mix well.

  3. Spread the crust over the chicken.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes or until done.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a sauce and gives the crust its structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps the flour cook smoothly.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the crust so it rises and becomes light.
Egg
Binds the crust dough and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Shortening
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and flaky.
Cream or rich milk
Enriches the sauce, adding fat and a smoother, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce well before covering the chicken. Flour must be cooked with the fat and liquid long enough to thicken fully and lose its raw starchy taste; undercooked flour leaves the gravy pasty and floury.

“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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