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Without Eggs

A chicken and vegetable pie baked slowly with a rich pie crust, containing onions, garlic, bacon, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, and Lima beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Chop the onions and garlic.

  2. In a double kettle, combine the butter, garlic, onions, and bacon.

  3. Fry the mixture until light brown.

Assemble and cook

  1. Add the tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, and Lima beans.

  2. Roll each piece of chicken in the pie crust.

  3. Alternate layering the vegetables and chicken in the double kettle.

  4. Cover closely and cook slowly for 4 to 5 hours.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onions brown when fried.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they cook, building the base flavour.
Tomatoes
Provide liquid and acidity that moisten and flavour the slow-cooked filling.
Chicken
Supplies the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Rich pie crust
Wraps the chicken and forms the pastry element of the dish.

The step that matters

Cover closely and cook slowly for 4 to 5 hours. Low, covered cooking keeps moisture in and lets tough chicken connective tissue break down gradually. Too much heat or an open lid can dry the filling and leave the meat tough.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, garlic, onion, tomato, corn, cucumber, lima beans):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, garlic, onion, tomato, corn, cucumber, lima beans. 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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