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Chicken Pie

A baked pie filled with parboiled chicken and gravy, topped with a crust made from flour, sour milk, baking soda, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 and gravy

  1. Parboil the chicken.

  2. Season the chicken in the pot.

  3. Remove the meat.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  5. Scald the gravy.

  6. Set the gravy aside.

Make the crust

  1. Mix sour milk with baking soda to make the crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a large tin pan, line it with the crust.

  2. Add the chicken meat.

  3. Pour the gravy until nearly full.

  4. Cover with the remaining crust.

  5. Leave a vent.

  6. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 2.5 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 meat filling that is cooked first and then layered into the pie.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it holds together instead of running out of the pie.
Sour milk
Acidic liquid that reacts with baking soda to give the crust lift and tenderness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas, leavening the crust.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that enriches the crust and gives it a tender, flaky texture.

The step that matters

Leave a vent in the top crust. A vent lets steam escape during baking. Without it, trapped steam can build pressure, make the crust soggy or split it, and make the gravy bubble out.

“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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