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Dessert

Chicken Pie

A pie made with stewed chicken, dough bits, and a rich gravy, topped with pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

  1. Prepare the chicken as for stewed chicken.

  2. Add small bits of dough to the chicken.

  3. Make a rich gravy with milk, butter, coarse sea salt, pepper, and flour.

  4. Prepare the pastry crust and line the pan with it if desired.

Bake

  1. Add a top crust 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Chicken
Forms the main filling and provides savory, meaty bulk.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a gravy that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the gravy's texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, giving it body and creaminess.
Small bits of dough
Cook within the filling, adding soft, dumpling-like pieces.

The step that matters

Make a rich gravy with milk, butter, coarse sea salt, pepper, and flour.. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the butter and milk; if added unevenly or undercooked, it leaves lumps or a raw starchy taste. Starch thickens as the mixture heats, so the gravy should be stirred and brought to a simmer before it goes into the pie.

“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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