Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pie

A savory pie with chicken, sour cream, and a buttery dough crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stew the chicken pieces in water until tender, adding salt.

  2. Place the chicken in a deep pan with broth.

  3. Sprinkle the pan with flour.

  4. Add pepper and more salt if needed.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sour cream, baking soda, coarse sea salt, butter, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Wet the edge of the pan and cover with dough, about ¾ inch thick, cutting a slit in the center for steam.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Fat hen
Provides the meat that becomes the main filling of the pie.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and richness to the dough, keeping it tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the dough rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and adds flavor.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the dough its stiff body and holds it together.

The step that matters

Covering the pan with dough. The dough must be stiff and cut with a steam slit; if it is too thin or unvented, it can become soggy or steam unevenly and crack while baking.

“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.

More chicken pie recipes

Baked 7Crust 5with Oysters 5Oyster 5Puff Pastry 3 See all 355 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes