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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with chicken, veal, hard boiled eggs, and a rich biscuit crust, baked with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and biscuit work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 841 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. 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.

Cook the meat

  1. Cover the chicken and veal with boiling water and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the meat and place it in a cooking pot for 5-6 hours.

  3. Once cooked, remove the bones and cut the meat into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Put the meat in a baking dish and cover with thickened gravy seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika.

  2. Slice the hard boiled eggs and add them to the meat.

  3. Cover with a rich biscuit crust and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven or in the cooking pot using both hot stones.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Chicken + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, which becomes tender and flavourful during long, gentle cooking.
Veal
Its connective tissue softens into gelatine, giving the filling a rich, moist body.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and substance to the filling as they are sliced through the meat.
Rich biscuit crust
Its fat and starch give a tender, golden-brown top that seals the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the meat for the full 5-6 hours. Tough connective tissue in the chicken and veal breaks down into gelatine only with slow, sustained gentle heat. Cutting the cooking short or boiling it hard leaves the meat chewy and the gravy thin.

“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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