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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with chicken, salt pork, butter, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pluck the chicken, singe off hairs, wipe it with a damp cloth, and carefully draw it without washing.

  2. Cut the chicken into joints and fry in a hot frying pan with 1 oz of butter and the diced salt pork until browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Stir in ½ cup of flour and let it brown.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Cover with boiling water and simmer for 1 hour until tender.

Make the pastry

  1. For the pastry, mix ½ cup of flour with 1 teaspoon of salt and 4 oz of butter using your fingertips.

  2. Add cold water to form a stiff paste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the pastry and line the edges of a baking dish.

  2. Add the chicken and gravy, cover with pastry, and make holes for steam.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 1 hour until the crust is browned.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer.
Flour
Browns in the fat and thickens the liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the frying and enriches the short pastry.
Salt pork
Renders fat and flavor into the pan for browning the chicken.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the base of the dish.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Letting the flour brown in the fat develops a nutty flavor and color in the gravy, and stirring prevents scorching or lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pork, butter, onion, 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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