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Thanksgiving Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with chicken, veal, ham, mushrooms, parsley, and hard‑boiled eggs, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Thanksgiving 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Layer the pie

  1. Layer the bottom of a pie dish with veal and ham slices alternately.

  2. Season with mushrooms, parsley, pepper, and salt, then add a little gravy.

  3. Arrange the chicken pieces neatly in the dish and place slices of hard boiled egg in each cavity.

  4. Repeat the seasoning and sauce, then add thin slices of dressed ham on top.

Bake

  1. Cover the pie with puff pastry, decorating with leaf shapes cut from the pastry.

  2. Brush the top with beaten egg and bake for 1.5 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Forms the main filling and provides the savory meat base of the pie.
Veal
Adds tender meat that layers with the ham and soaks up the seasoned gravy.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory flavor that complements the chicken and veal.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm texture that holds its shape within the filling.
Gravy
Provides moisture so the filling stays juicy during baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals and covers the filling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, ham, mushroom, pepper, egg):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, ham, mushroom, 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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