Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pie

A baked pie with chicken quarters, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, marjoram, and covered with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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 pie

  1. Season the chicken quarters with salt, pepper, mace, and sweet marjoram.

  2. Place the chicken in a dish, close together.

  3. Dredge the chicken with flour.

  4. Add butter pieces.

  5. Pour in enough hot water or veal stock to fill the dish.

Crust and bake

  1. Line the sides and rim of the dish with pie crust.

  2. Cover the chicken with the crust.

  3. Cut a hole in the top.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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 meat, which cooks through in the dish's liquid and oven heat.
Flour
Dredging coats the chicken and helps thicken the liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps brown the crust and surface.
Hot water or veal stock
Fills the dish, creating steam and a savory liquid that cooks the chicken.
Pie crust
Encloses the chicken, trapping steam and moisture while the filling cooks.

The step that matters

Pour in enough hot water or veal stock to fill the dish. Adding the liquid hot gives the chicken a head start and keeps the flour-dredged coating from clumping. Enough liquid is needed so the filling stays moist and forms a gravy while baking.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, marjoram, flour, butter, veal. 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.

More chicken pie recipes

Baked 7Crust 5with Oysters 5Oyster 5Puff Pastry 3 See all 355 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes