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Modern Chicken Pie

Layered pie of boneless chicken and sausage encased in pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 pie dish with a thin layer of pastry.

  3. Spread a layer of moistened sausage meat over the pastry.

  4. Place a layer of the boned chicken joints on top.

  5. Add a layer of sausage meat.

  6. Continue layering chicken and sausage meat until the dish is full.

Cover and bake

  1. Roll out a cover of pastry about ½ inch thick.

  2. Secure the pastry cover at the edges.

  3. Trim off excess pastry.

  4. Make an incision in the top of the pastry.

  5. Decorate with pastry leaves around the incision.

  6. Glaze the top with egg yolk.

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

  8. If the crust browns too quickly, cover it with writing paper.

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. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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
Forms the main meaty filling, providing bulk and savory flavor when cooked through.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and seasoning that moisten the layers and enrich the filling.
Egg yolk
Glazes the pastry, promoting a glossy, golden browned top.

The step that matters

Covering the crust to control browning. The pie bakes for a long time, so the pastry top can darken before the filling is cooked through. Covering it with paper slows browning while the interior finishes cooking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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