Name: Chicken Pie
Ingredients: 3 good-sized chickens; a little salt pork, sliced thin; coarse sea salt (to taste); biscuit dough (made with baking powder); oysters (enough to cover the top)

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

3 good-sized chickens
a little salt pork, sliced thin
coarse sea salt (to taste)
biscuit dough (made with baking powder)
oysters (enough to cover the top)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Cook the chickens and salt pork, seasoning and thickening the gravy as for fricassee chicken.
Line the sides of a pie pan with biscuit dough.
Remove the larger bones from the chicken and pour it into the pan.

Assemble and bake

Cover the chicken with a generous layer of oysters.
Top with more biscuit dough to cover.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for one hour.

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.

Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pork + oystertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,255 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Biscuit + oystertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together183 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together972 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Pork + biscuittop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together339 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Biscuit dough: Forms the crust that encloses the filling and bakes into a tender, flaky lining.
Oysters: Add a briny, savoury flavour to the filling and cover the top of the pie.
Chickens: Form the main filling, giving the pie its meat and body.
Salt pork: Adds fat and savoury depth to the chicken and gravy.

“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.