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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with boiled chicken, a buttery crust, and a thickened broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and tea work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 259 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens into joints and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Place the chicken in a large pot and cover with water.

  3. Boil slowly and skim the surface.

  4. Add salt and butter to the broth.

  5. Remove the chicken and set aside.

Make the broth and dough

  1. Mix flour with cold water.

  2. Stir the mixture into the chicken broth.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Combine sifted flour and lard, rubbing them together until well mixed.

  6. Add sour cream and baking soda mixture.

  7. Stir quickly and knead lightly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a 6-quart pan.

  2. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick to line the bottom.

  3. Pack the chicken into the dish.

  4. Pour in enough broth to fill within ½ inch of the rim.

  5. Roll out another crust.

  6. Cover the top and pinch the edges to seal.

  7. Cut a decorative edge from the leftover dough.

  8. Attach it around the rim.

  9. Cut a vent in the center of the pie.

  10. Cover with paper to prevent scorching.

  11. Bake for 2 hours.

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. Coffee + teatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Chicken + teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

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

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
Thickens the broth and, with lard and sour cream, forms the tender pastry structure.
Lard
Shortens the dough, keeping it tender and flaky by coating flour strands with fat.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness to the dough and gives it a slight tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to lift the dough and help it brown.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Stir quickly and knead lightly. Overworking dough develops gluten, making the crust tough. Brief handling keeps the pastry tender once the baking soda and sour cream have started reacting.

“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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