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Chicken Pie

A baked pie filled with boiled chicken pieces, flour, salt, and cooking liquid, topped with a thick crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 chickens in water until barely covered.

  2. Skim off any foam.

  3. Once tender, remove the chickens and carve them into pieces.

  4. Remove thick skin from the chickens if necessary.

Assemble the pie

  1. Prepare a deep baking dish lined with a thick pie crust.

  2. Arrange the chicken pieces in the dish, mixing different types together.

  3. Sprinkle each layer with a little flour and coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour in the cooking liquid until the dish is nearly full, avoiding overflow.

  5. Cover with a top crust and seal the edges carefully.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for nearly an hour, or until the crust is golden brown.

  2. For added flavor, you can mix butter into the cooking liquid.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked tender and forms the pie's filling.
Flour
Sprinkled between layers to help thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Thick pie crust
Forms the sturdy base and top that hold the filling in during baking.
Butter
Optional fat stirred into the cooking liquid to add richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Pour in the cooking liquid without overfilling. Filling the dish nearly full but not to overflow leaves room for the liquid to thicken and bubble as it bakes. Too much liquid can spill over and make the sealed crust soggy.

“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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