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A Common Chicken Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,375 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Common Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the chickens for boiling and cut them into joints.

  2. Season the chicken with coarse sea salt, white pepper, and nutmeg or pounded mace.

  3. Arrange the chicken neatly in a pie dish lined with pastry.

  4. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in halves and lay them among the chicken.

  5. Pour in some water to moisten the filling.

  6. Cover with a thick layer of pastry, seal the edges, and decorate the top.

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. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. White pepper + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Chicken + nutmegtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, nutmeg, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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