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Plain Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed chicken, pork slices, butter, and mushroom ketchup, topped with pie crust and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Plain Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and stew it in enough water to cover.

  2. Once tender, remove the chicken and line a deep dish with pie crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the chicken in the dish with pork slices and butter cut into small pieces.

  2. Add some of the cooking liquid.

  3. Flavor with mushroom ketchup.

  4. Thicken with flour.

  5. Cover with pie crust.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, which becomes tender through slow stewing in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and keeps the filling moist.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body that holds the filling together.
Pork
Adds savory fat and meaty flavor to the filling.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid to thicken it properly; if added raw or in clumps, it leaves a pasty texture or lumps in the filling.

“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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