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Modern Chicken Pie

A layered pastry pie with chicken joints, sausage meat, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Modern 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 filling

  1. Remove bones from the chicken joints and season the flesh with salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Line a dish with thin pastry and spread a layer of sausage meat over it.

  3. Place a layer of boned chicken joints on top. Add a layer of sausage meat.

  4. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

Cover and bake

  1. Roll out a cover of pastry about ½ inch thick and secure it at the edges. Trim excess pastry.

  2. Make an incision in the top. Decorate with pastry leaves.

  3. Glaze the entire pie with egg yolk.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  5. Cover with writing paper if it browns too quickly.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold, but cold is preferred.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,656 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 (in the method)
Forms the main body of the pie and gives it savoury meaty texture.
Sausage meat
Adds moisture and richness, and layers flavour through the filling.
Egg yolk
Glazes the pastry, promoting a glossy golden browning in the oven.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and holds its shape during baking.

The step that matters

Covering with writing paper. Pastry browns faster than the dense filling cooks through, so covering it late in baking prevents scorching while the centre finishes cooking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, meat, egg. 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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