Name: Chicken Pie
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, cut into quarters; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; a pinch of mace; a pinch of sweet marjoram; flour, for dredging; 2 tablespoons butter, cut into small bits; 1 cup hot water or veal stock; paste crust for lining and covering

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 chicken

Season the chicken quarters with pepper, salt, mace, and sweet marjoram.
Place the chicken quarters in a dish, close together.
Dredge the chicken quarters with flour.
Add butter bits to the dish.
Pour hot water or veal stock into the dish to fill it.

Assemble the pie

Prepare a paste crust.
Line the sides and rim of the dish with the crust.
Add the chicken quarters to the dish.
Cover the chicken with the crust.
Cut a hole in the top of the crust.

Bake

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.
If the chicken is not very young, boil it for 30 minutes after cutting with strips of pork.

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.

Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,265 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mace + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together767 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 flavors the pie.
Flour: Dusting the chicken helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, moistening the chicken as it bakes.
Hot water or veal stock: Provides cooking liquid that gently steams the chicken and forms the sauce.

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Sagefits better
Parsleyfits better
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.