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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with boiled chicken, gravy, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the fowl into pieces and clean the liver, heart, and gizzard.

  2. Wash the bird and place it in a stewpan with the gizzard, liver, and heart.

  3. Pour boiling water over the meat and bring to a boil, skimming carefully.

Make the gravy and filling

  1. Mix the flour with ½ cup cold water and stir into the stewpan.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Check if the chicken is tender, then remove from heat and add butter.

  4. Invert a cup in the center of a pie dish that holds about 3 pints.

  5. Place the chicken and gravy in the dish and let it cool completely.

Bake the pie

  1. Roll out the pie crust slightly larger than the dish, cut a small hole in the center for steam.

  2. Cover the chicken with the crust, fold in the sides, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. For added flavor, consider adding bay leaf, parsley, onion, or hard-boiled eggs.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Fowl
Provides the meat and, simmered, the broth that forms the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished gravy for a smoother mouthfeel.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and bakes to a golden, crisp top layer.

The step that matters

Simmering the fowl until tender. Fowl is tough and needs long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down; a rolling boil toughens the meat and clouds the gravy.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, onion, oyster):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, onion, oyster. 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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