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Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with chicken and vegetables in a creamy gravy, topped with pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. 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. Place the chicken in a pot and cover with warm water.

  2. Add salt, peppercorns, onion, celery, carrot, and turnip.

  3. Cook slowly for 2 hours, until the meat separates from the bones.

  4. Boil the broth down to 2 cups.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, stir in flour, and gradually add the broth until smooth.

  2. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove most of the chicken from the bones, leaving some small bones for structure.

  2. Layer chicken and gravy in a baking dish, placing the breast bone in the center.

  3. Top with a crust about ¾ inch thick, cutting a slit for steam.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat filling, and its bones give the pie body and flavor during cooking.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy that holds the filling together.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, carrying flavor throughout the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the gravy.
Pastry
Forms a crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy smoothly. Adding the broth gradually to the butter and flour mixture keeps flour from clumping. Stirring until smooth lets the starch thicken the liquid evenly, so the filling sets properly rather than being lumpy or thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, 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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