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Chicken Pie

A chicken pie made with boiled chicken, gravy thickened with flour, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Cook the chicken

  1. Combine the chickens, onion, parsley, bay leaf, and cover with boiling water in a stewpan.

  2. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender, adding salt and pepper halfway through.

  3. Remove the chicken.

  4. Strain the stock, skim off the fat, and reduce it to 4 cups.

  5. Thicken the stock with flour diluted in enough cold water to pour easily.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a small cup in the center of a baking dish, remove some larger bones from the chicken, and pour the gravy over the chicken.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Cover with pie crust, making several incisions for steam to escape.

  4. Wet the edge of the crust and create a rim around it.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) until the crust is risen and golden brown.

Serve

  1. Roll out any leftover pastry, cut into diamond shapes, bake, and serve with the pie when reheated.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat for the filling, and their bones and skin flavour the stock.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy that holds together in the pie.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven, forming the crisp top.

The step that matters

Thicken the stock with flour diluted in cold water. Flour must be dispersed in cold water before it meets hot stock, otherwise it clumps. Thin enough to pour, it thickens as it heats, giving a smooth gravy that sets the filling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, pepper, flour. 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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