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Chicken Pie

A chicken pie made with biscuit dough crust and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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 the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens and place them in a pot of hot water to cover. Add more water as it boils away.

  2. Boil the chickens until tender.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the sides of a 4 or 6 quart pan with the biscuit dough.

  2. Add part of the chicken, season with salt, pepper, and butter. Lay in a few strips or squares of dough.

  3. Add the rest of the chicken and season again.

  4. Season the boiling liquid with butter, salt, and pepper. Add some to the pie.

  5. Keep adding chicken liquid as needed to prevent the pie from being dry.

  6. Cover with a crust (¼ inch thick) with a hole in the center the size of a teacup.

Bake and make gravy

  1. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

  2. To make gravy, mix a tablespoon of butter with flour to form a paste. Stir into the remaining liquid, adding hot water if necessary.

  3. Let the gravy boil once and serve.

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. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Chickens
Provide the meat that becomes the main filling of the pie.
Biscuit dough
Forms the crust that lines the pan and covers the pie, holding the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the filling and the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Keep adding chicken liquid as needed. Without enough liquid the filling can dry out during baking, so the pie stays moist only if the cooking liquid is added as the pie bakes.

“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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