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Chicken Pie

A baked dish of seasoned chicken quarters covered with pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

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

  2. Place the chicken in a dish, tightly packed.

  3. Dredge the chicken with flour and add butter pieces.

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

Assemble

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

  2. Cover the chicken with the crust and cut a hole in the top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. If the chicken is not very young, boil the pieces with strips of pork for 30 minutes before baking.

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 and gives the pie its body and flavour.
Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the cooking liquid into a savoury gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and keeps the meat moist.
Hot water or veal stock
Supplies liquid that cooks the chicken and forms the gravy in the dish.

The step that matters

Cutting a hole in the top crust. The hole lets steam escape as the filling heats. Without it, pressure builds under the pastry, which can lift, split, or make the crust soggy.

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.

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