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Chicken Pie

A baked pie filled with boiled chicken, broth, and a crust of flour, lard, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. 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 tender, seasoning with salt to taste.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, lard, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Add the sweet milk and work the lard into the flour until the dough is soft enough to roll out.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep dish with the crust, then add the chicken (bones removed), chicken broth, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cover with the remaining crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy made from the chicken broth.

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust once mixed with liquid and fat.
Lard
Works into the flour to make the crust tender and flaky.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to lift and lighten the crust.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to baking soda, helping the crust rise.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and can be rolled.
Chicken
Forms the main filling, becoming tender from long boiling.

The step that matters

Work the lard into the flour. Rubbing the fat into the flour coats the starch and limits gluten formation, so the crust stays tender instead of tough. Adding the milk too early or overworking the dough toughens it.

“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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