Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pie

A savory pie with boiled chicken, onion, celery, parsley, and seasoned gravy, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken 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.

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken joints in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Stew slowly at the side of the fire until the chicken is tender.

  3. Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the grated onion, bay leaf, celery, parsley, pepper, and salt to the pot.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 1 hour, then set aside.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the chicken neatly in a large pudding dish.

  2. Pour the seasoned gravy over the chicken.

  3. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the pie and supplies savory meat and flavor.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the gravy as it simmers.
Pastry
Forms a crisp, golden crust that seals the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stewing the chicken until tender. Chicken joints that are not simmered gently and long enough stay tough and stringy. Slow, low heat breaks down connective tissue and keeps the meat moist, while a rolling boil can toughen the muscle fibres.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, parsley, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, parsley, 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.

More chicken pie recipes

Baked 7Crust 5with Oysters 5Oyster 5Puff Pastry 3 See all 355 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes