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Delicious Chicken Pie

A savory pie with boiled chicken, creamy sauce, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Delicious 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. Remove all fat, skin, and tendons from the chickens.

  2. Place the chickens in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and simmer gently for 2 hours, keeping covered.

  3. Remove the chickens, cut into pieces, and place them in a deep pie dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Add milk to the saucepan liquor.

  2. Thicken the liquid with flour creamed with butter.

  3. Season the sauce with cayenne pepper, onion juice, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Just before removing from heat, stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

  2. Once both the sauce and chicken are cold, cover with pastry, making a steam vent in the center.

  3. Brush the pastry with egg white.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the pastry is cooked.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Chickens
Provide the meat and the cooking liquor that becomes the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and smooths the flour into the sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the sauce when stirred in near the end.
Egg white
Brushed on the pastry to help it brown and gloss.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce boils. Adding them just before removing from heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, flour, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, flour, butter, pepper, egg. 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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