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Baked Chicken Pie

A baked dish of seasoned chicken with butter and flour, topped with crust and optional oysters, ham, or egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Baked Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line the bottom and sides of a deep dish with thick paste.

  3. Season the cut-up chicken with salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg, then place it in the dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add pieces of butter rolled in flour on top of the chicken.

  2. Fill the dish with cold water until it is two-thirds full.

  3. Cover with the top crust, notching it decoratively. Cut a slit in the top and decorate with a tulip-shaped piece of paste.

  4. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

  5. For added flavor, consider adding oysters, slices of cold boiled ham, or hard-boiled egg yolks.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour 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 meat, which cooks through in the covered dish as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that melts into the water and chicken, adding moisture and flavor.
Paste
Forms the sturdy pastry lining and crust that enclose and hold the filling together.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until cooked through. The chicken is enclosed under pastry and water, so its doneness is hard to see. Cooking until the meat is fully cooked and the juices run clear ensures it is safe to eat.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, oyster, ham. 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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