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Chicken Pie

A baked pie with boiled chicken pieces in a creamy gravy, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chicken pieces in hot water until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken to a baking pan.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter with a little cream to thicken the gravy.

  4. Add the minced green onion, salt, and pepper to the gravy mixture.

  5. Pour the gravy over the chicken in the baking pan.

Bake

  1. Cover with pastry and bake until golden.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty filling of the pie.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it binds to the chicken rather than running off.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the gravy smoothly.
Cream
Adds moisture and body to the gravy.
Pastry
Forms a crust that bakes golden over the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour and butter must be mixed smoothly with the cream before the gravy is added. Lumps or uneven thickening make the filling watery or patchy once baked under the pastry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, butter, cream, 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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