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Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with shredded chicken in a thickened gravy, topped with a buttery dough crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the chicken

  1. Remove all fat from the chicken, cut it up, and place it in boiling water.

  2. Add pepper and salt to taste and cook until the meat easily comes off the bones.

  3. Skim the chicken from the water, cool it, and shred it into small pieces, removing all bones.

  4. Leave about 1 quart of liquid in the pot for gravy, then add enough flour to thicken it.

  5. Stir in 2 tablespoons of butter or more for richness.

  6. Pour over the chicken.

  7. Let it cool.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Rub in the butter and lard until fine.

  3. Add enough sweet milk to form a moderately soft dough.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep baking dish with the dough.

  2. Fill it with the cooled chicken mixture.

  3. Cover with more dough.

  4. Bake for an hour or more at 350°F (175°C), making several air holes in the top to prevent gas buildup.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the gravy and crust.
Lard
Shortens the dough, giving it a tender, flaky texture.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to lift it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to leaven the crust.

The step that matters

Venting the top crust. Air holes let steam and gas escape during baking; without them, pressure can build under the crust and cause it to split or bulge unevenly.

“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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