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Chicken Pie

A pie filled with chicken and gravy, topped with crust and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken and cut it into nice pieces.

  2. Place the chicken pieces in a pie dish.

Make the gravy

  1. If you have cold gravy, add it to the dish; if not, place the chicken bones in a saucepan with enough water to make gravy.

  2. Season the water with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a pinch of mace, then boil until the flavor is extracted from the bones.

  3. Pour the broth into the dish with the chicken.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish with a pie crust.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Chicken + macetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Provides the main body and meaty filling of the pie.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor that keeps the filling from drying out.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven as the outer structure.

The step that matters

Boiling the bones for the broth. Boiling long enough draws gelatin and flavor from the bones; if the liquid is not reduced or simmered enough, the gravy will taste thin and may not set or coat the chicken well.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper. 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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