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Chicken Pie with Oysters

A savory pie filled with chicken and oysters, seasoned with salt, pepper, and oyster and chicken liquors.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Pie with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then drain and reserve the chicken liquor.

  2. Drain the oysters and reserve the oyster liquor.

  3. Line a large, round pan with pie crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer oysters and chicken in the pan until full.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, bits of Cottolene, and add the oyster and chicken liquors.

  3. Cover with more pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve with sliced lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main briny flavor and tender filling that cooks gently inside the crust.
Chicken
Adds substance and meaty body to the filling so the pie is more than shellfish.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the golden top and base.
Cottolene
Adds fat that enriches the filling and helps the crust brown and taste rich.
Chicken liquor
Supplies savory cooking liquid that moistens the filling and carries seasoning through it.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated oyster flavor and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the liquors before covering. The reserved oyster and chicken liquors supply the moisture that keeps the filling juicy as it bakes. Pouring them in before the top crust goes on keeps the liquid inside the pie rather than spilling out during baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, oyster, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, oyster, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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