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Modern Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with boned chicken and sausage meat, topped with pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Modern 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 filling

  1. Skin and cut the chickens into joints, removing all bones.

  2. Season the chicken flesh with salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

Layer and cover

  1. Line a dish with thin pastry and spread a layer of sausage meat on the bottom.

  2. Place a layer of boned chicken joints over the sausage meat, then add more sausage meat.

  3. Continue layering until the dish is full.

  4. Roll out a pastry cover about ½ inch thick and secure it over the pie.

  5. Trim off excess pastry and make an incision in the top.

  6. Decorate with pastry leaves and glaze the top with egg yolk.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. Cover with writing paper if the crust browns too quickly.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Forms the main meat filling and gives the pie its savoury body.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and moisture that keep the layered filling tender as it cooks.
Egg yolk
Glazing the crust with it promotes a glossy, golden browning on top.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and forms a sturdy crust that holds the pie together.

The step that matters

Covering the crust when it browns too quickly. Pastry browns faster than the filling heats through. Covering it with paper slows surface browning so the centre can cook fully without the crust burning.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, nutmeg, meat, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, meat, 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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