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Chicken-pie

A savory pie filled with chicken, pork, and a buttered crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Chicken-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pluck the chicken.

  2. Singe the chicken.

  3. Wipe the chicken with a wet towel.

  4. Draw the chicken without breaking the intestines and boil it in enough water to cover until tender.

  5. Save the heart, liver, gizzard, and broth.

  6. Cut the chicken into pieces suitable for the pie.

Make the filling

  1. Slice the pork thin.

  2. Fry the pork with the chicken until light brown.

  3. Season the pork and chicken with salt and pepper.

  4. Remove the chicken and pork from the pan.

  5. Stir flour into the pan and cook until brown.

  6. Add chicken broth, salt, and pepper.

  7. Stir until the mixture boils for 2 minutes.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, mix flour, salt, butter, and enough cold water to hold it together.

  2. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 1 inch thick.

  3. Cut firm butter into slices.

  4. Lay the butter slices over the dough.

  5. Fold the dough to enclose the butter.

  6. Wrap the dough in a floured towel.

  7. Chill for 30 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Flour and butter 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 cooked meat and rich flavor of the pie filling.
Fat pork
Adds fat and savory flavor as it browns in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy and helps bind the crust dough.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the filling that thickens into gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creates flaky layers in the crust.

The step that matters

Enclosing the butter in the dough. The firm butter must stay in cold, separate layers so steam can lift the dough into flaky sheets. If the butter softens and blends in, the crust turns dense rather than flaky.

“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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