Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pie

A chicken pie with biscuit dough crust, filled with stewed chicken and cream, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and salt it, allowing it to stand for a few hours.

  2. Stew the chicken in a small amount of water for 30 minutes.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a long biscuit pan with biscuit dough.

  2. Transfer the chicken and liquid into the pan, ensuring you have at least 1 cup of liquid.

  3. Add some butter and black pepper to the pan.

  4. Cover with a crust of the same dough, making a hole in the center.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) and ensure it does not dry out.

  2. Whip together the flour and cream until well combined.

  3. When the pie is light brown, remove the top crust and add the cream through the hole.

  4. Return to the oven and cook until browned and the gravy is well done.

  5. Serve on a platter, garnished with parsley or cress.

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

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

  2. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Chicken
Provides the main meat and, while stewing, the liquid that becomes the gravy.
Biscuit dough
Forms the crust that encloses the chicken and browns in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it sets into a smooth, stable gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy poured into the pie.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling and gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the cream through the hole. Pour the flour-cream mixture in after the top crust has browned, not before. Flour needs sustained heat to cook out its raw taste and thicken, and the cream must be fully set in the oven so the gravy thickens without becoming runny or curdled.

“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