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Chicken Pot-pie

A savory pie with chicken, ham, force-meat, and eggs, topped with puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pot-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.

Make the gravy

  1. Combine chicken bones, onion, herbs, mace, and a little water in a stew pan.

  2. Stew for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the liquid; this will be used for gravy.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a pie dish, layer the chicken, ham, force-meat, and egg rings.

  2. Season each layer with mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  3. Pour in ½ cup of water.

  4. Cover the dish with puff pastry and seal the edges.

  5. Brush the top with egg yolk.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Once baked, pour the reserved gravy over the top.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 and, with its bones, the flavourful stock for the gravy.
Force-meat
Adds a dense, savoury filling layer that holds moisture and flavour within the pie.
Eggs
Hard-boiled egg rings add firmness and richness to the filling; the yolk glaze promotes browning on the crust.
Ham
Contributes salty, savoury flavour to the layered filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that rises and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Strain the stock before assembling. Straining removes bone fragments and solids so the gravy is smooth and clear. Poured over the baked pie, it adds moisture that keeps the filling from drying out.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, ham, meat, egg, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, ham, meat, egg, nutmeg, 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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