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Chicken Pie

A baked pie filled with boiled chicken, onion, parsley, butter, eggs, and sweet cream, topped with a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Disjoint the chickens and cut the backbone into small pieces.

  2. Boil the chickens with salt pork in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Remove the breast bone and skim off any scum.

Make the filling

  1. Add finely chopped onion and parsley for flavor, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Stir in a few ounces of butter and ensure there is enough liquid to cover the chicken.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix in the sweet cream.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a 5-quart pan with a rich crust, add the chicken mixture, and cover with another crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the crust is done.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main body of the pie filling, cooked tender by boiling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a sliceable custard-like texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the filling.
Salt pork
Lends savory fat and seasoning to the broth the chicken cooks in.

The step that matters

Boil the chickens until tender. The chicken must be fully tender before baking, since the oven only sets the crust and custard-like filling and will not fully cook tough meat. Keeping the water covering the birds ensures even cooking.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, onion, pepper, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, onion, pepper, butter, egg, cream. 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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