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Chicken Pie

A baked chicken pie with a buttery crust and a creamy broth filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender, adding salt when two-thirds done; remove the bones.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt the butter, then add flour and pepper; mix well.

  2. Stir in warm broth, then add boiling broth and cream or milk.

  3. Combine chicken and broth in a baking dish and heat in the oven.

Make the crust and bake

  1. For the crust, mix flour, salt, baking powder, and shortening.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg and milk until combined.

  3. Spread the crust over the chicken mixture and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce and gives the crust its structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps the flour thicken it.
Baking powder
Releases gas as the crust bakes, helping it rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the crust ingredients together and adds structure as it sets.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crust and keeps it flaky.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and then the broth. Flour must be cooked briefly in fat before liquid is added, and the liquid must be added gradually while stirring, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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