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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, gravy, butter, flour, lard, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut up the chicken and place it in a pot with enough water to make gravy.

  2. Add ½ cup of butter rolled in flour, salt, pepper, and mace to taste.

  3. Boil the eggs hard, then stir the yolks into the chicken mixture.

Make the paste

  1. In a separate bowl, mix ¾ pound of lard, ½ cup of butter, a little water, and a pinch of salt to make a paste.

Bake

  1. Bake the pie until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and, when simmered, releases flavour and body into the gravy.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour thickens the gravy while the butter adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Lard
Shortens the paste, making it tender and flaky rather than tough.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks stirred into the filling add richness and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Make the gravy before adding the eggs. The flour-butter mixture must cook in the simmering liquid to thicken fully and lose its raw floury taste. Thickening only comes once the starch has been heated with liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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