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Chicken Pie

A baked pie filled with boiled chicken, butter, and broth, topped with a flour and baking powder crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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 the crust

  1. Prepare a crust using flour and baking powder, slightly shorter than a biscuit dough.

  2. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and line a 4-quart dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled chickens and place it in the dish; season with salt.

  2. Add pieces of butter and pour in the liquor from boiling the chickens.

  3. Roll out another piece of crust for the top and cover the pie.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is thoroughly done.

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. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the crust once mixed and baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the crust so it rises and bakes lighter.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and crust.
Chickens
Provide the cooked meat that forms the body of the pie.
Chicken liquor
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is thoroughly done. A pie with a wet filling needs the crust fully baked on the bottom as well as the top. Underbaked dough stays pasty and doughy, so the crust should be checked until it is browned and firm throughout.

“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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