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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with boiled chicken, butter, salt pork, cracker crumbs, and pot liquid, baked in pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

  1. Boil the chicken in as little water as possible until done.

  2. Grease a deep dish with butter and line it with pie crust.

Assemble

  1. Layer pieces of chicken in the dish, sprinkling bits of butter, pepper, salt, cracker crumbs, and chopped salt pork between layers.

  2. Add 3 to 4 spoonfuls of the pot liquid, then repeat layering until the dish is full.

  3. Cover with pie crust, tucking in the edges.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about an hour or longer.

  2. Make gravy from the remaining liquid and serve with boiled potatoes.

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

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of the filling, cooked through by boiling before layering.
Pot liquid
Adds moisture and savory flavour to the filling and becomes the base for the gravy.
Pie crust
Forms the enclosing shell that holds the layers together and contains the moisture while baking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavour that seasons the chicken layers as it cooks.
Cracker crumbs
Absorbs liquid and adds body, helping the layers hold together.

The step that matters

Add the pot liquid before covering. Liquid added to the layers keeps the chicken moist during the long bake, while the crust traps steam; too little leaves the filling dry.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, pepper, pork):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Onionfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

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