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To Make a Chicken-Pie

A savory pie with chicken, force-meat, truffles, morels, artichokes, and optional cock's combs, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make a 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.

Prepare

  1. Make a puff pastry crust.

  2. Season the chicken pieces with pepper, salt, and a little mace.

  3. Prepare a force-meat by mixing veal, suet, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, anchovy, lemon peel, thyme, and egg yolk.

  4. Form some of the mixture into small balls and set the rest aside.

Assemble

  1. Layer one chicken in the bottom of the dish.

  2. Add sweetbreads cut into pieces, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  3. Sprinkle truffles, morels, artichoke pieces, and cock's combs over the chicken.

  4. Top with the remaining chicken pieces.

  5. Add water and cover the pie with the pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until well cooked.

  2. Once out of the oven, fill with gravy 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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Chicken + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks under the crust.
Veal
Forms the body of the force-meat, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the force-meat moist and rich during baking.
Egg yolk
Binds the force-meat so it holds together when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the force-meat set with a light texture.
Truffles
Add a concentrated, earthy aroma that flavors the surrounding meat.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F until well cooked. The chicken and force-meat must cook fully through under the crust, while the pastry bakes crisp. Underbaking leaves raw meat near the bone and a soggy base, while overbaking dries the meat and toughens the pastry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, veal, bread, anchovy, lemon, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, veal, bread, anchovy, lemon, thyme. 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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