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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, ham or bacon, force-meat balls, hard-boiled eggs, and seasoned with white pepper, salt, mace, nutmeg, and Cayenne pepper.

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 ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the chicken pieces with white pepper, salt, mace, nutmeg, and Cayenne pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chicken, ham, force-meat balls, and hard-boiled eggs in a baking dish.

  2. If baking in a dish, add a little water; if in a raised crust, do not add water.

  3. Prepare gravy from knuckle of veal or scraps while the pie bakes.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy poured over the pie.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and richness inside the pie filling.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the layered filling.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mace, nutmeg, pepper, ham, 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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