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Chicken Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Season each chicken joint with coarse sea salt, white pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Lay the seasoned chicken in a dish with slices of ham or bacon.

  3. Add a few bits of butter rolled in flour and a little water.

  4. Cover with a crust and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  5. For a richer pie, add veal cutlets or veal udder at the bottom.

  6. Include force-meat balls and yolks of hard boiled eggs if desired.

  7. Pour a good jelly-gravy over the chicken before baking.

  8. Season the gravy with peppercorns, onions, and parsley.

  9. Mushrooms can be added for improvement.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mace, nutmeg, ham, butter, flour, veal):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mace, nutmeg, ham, butter, flour, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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