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Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed chicken and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken joints in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Stew slowly until tender.

  3. Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside.

  4. Add the grated onion, bay leaf, celery, parsley, pepper, and salt to the pot.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour.

Make the pastry

  1. Prepare the pastry by chopping the chilled butter into the flour until the mixture resembles peas.

  2. Add iced water gradually to form a rough paste.

  3. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

  4. Fold the dough in thirds.

  5. Turn the rough edges toward you.

  6. Roll out again.

  7. Repeat this process three times.

  8. Chill the pastry for at least 1 hour before using.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the chicken in a large pudding dish and pour the seasoned gravy over it.

  2. Cover the chicken with the pastry and bake until golden brown.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creates flaky layers in the pastry as it melts and steams during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry dough once mixed with water.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Chopping the chilled butter into the flour. Butter must stay cold so it forms small pieces in the flour; as it melts in the oven it leaves steam pockets that make the pastry flaky rather than dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, parsley, pepper, flour, butter. 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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