Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. 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
Cut up the chicken and parboil it.
Grease a pudding dish and line the bottom and sides with pie crust.
Layer and make gravy
Layer the chicken in the dish, adding bits of salt pork, pepper, and salt.
Chop the hard boiled eggs and sprinkle some over the chicken.
Repeat layering with remaining chicken, pork, and eggs until all ingredients are used.
Make gravy by combining some of the chicken boiling water with flour and bits of butter.
Pour the gravy over the chicken and cover with a pie crust.
Bake
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.
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.
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Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,417 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Forms the bulk of the filling and provides the main savoury meat flavour.
- Hard boiled eggs
- Add richness and body to the filling as they are layered through the chicken.
- Flour
- Thickens the chicken boiling water into a gravy that binds the filling.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the gravy.
The step that matters
Make gravy by combining some of the chicken boiling water with flour and bits of butter.. Flour must be fully combined into the liquid, or it clumps and the gravy stays lumpy and unevenly thickened. Adding the butter in bits helps it blend smoothly.
“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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