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Chicken and Ham Pie

A cold pie made with chicken, ham, and a gelatinous broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken and Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in minimal water until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the meat, chop it finely, and season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

Assemble and set

  1. Wet a mold and line it with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Layer the chicken and ham in the mold, alternating until filled.

  3. Boil down the broth until 1 cup remains, season with pepper, salt, and a little cayenne.

  4. Pour the broth over the chicken to form a jelly.

  5. Refrigerate overnight or all day.

  6. If needed, soak a little gelatin and add it to the broth for extra firmness.

  7. Unmold and garnish with lemon or parsley.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the cooked meat that forms the body of the pie.
Chicken broth
Reduced and poured over the meat, its natural gelatin sets into a jelly.
Hard-boiled eggs
Sliced to line the mold, giving a firm, decorative layer when unmolded.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a firmer, meatier texture between chicken layers.
Gelatin
Adds extra setting strength to the broth for a firmer jelly.

The step that matters

Pour the broth over the chicken to form a jelly. The broth must be reduced and well seasoned before pouring, because chilling mutes flavour and the set depends on its natural gelatin. Chilling long enough lets the jelly firm and hold its shape when unmolded.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, lemon, ham, egg, gelatin. 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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