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Chicken Pie

A savory pie of boiled chicken, herbs, and optional truffles, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint the chicken carefully and boil it in enough water to cover, adding the onion, herbs, pepper, and salt until very tender.

  2. Remove from heat and, while hot, strip out the largest bones.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the chicken pieces in a pastry-lined dish and add a few slices of hard boiled eggs and truffles if desired.

  2. Strain the boiling water over the chicken until the pie is filled.

  3. Cover with the pie crust, leaving an opening at the top, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for three hours, covering the crust to prevent over-browning.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Egg + truffletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,604 recipes

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

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, which becomes very tender from long gentle boiling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced richness and body inside the pie filling.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Covering the crust during baking. Pastry browns quickly at 400°F, and three hours of baking can scorch it before the filling is heated through. Covering the crust slows browning while the interior cooks.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg, truffle. 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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