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Chicken Pie

A baked pie with chicken, ham or bacon, forcemeat balls, hard‑boiled egg yolks, and gravy, topped with pastry.

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

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.

Layer the pie

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

  2. Layer the chicken in a dish, followed by slices of ham or bacon, and repeat until the dish is filled.

  3. Add forcemeat balls and yolks of hard-boiled eggs in each layer.

  4. Pour a little veal gravy or water over the layers.

  5. Cover with your choice of pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

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 + pastatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken (in the method)
Provides the main meat, savory flavor, and the bulk of the pie's structure.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavor and fat that seasons the chicken layers.
Forcemeat balls
Add richness and a tender, soft texture between the layers of meat.
Yolks of hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Veal gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor so the layers do not dry out while baking.

The step that matters

Pour the gravy or water over the layers. Enough liquid keeps the meat moist as it bakes, but too much makes the filling soggy and can wet the pastry from underneath. Add only a little and let the layers absorb it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white pepper, nutmeg, ham, egg, veal, pasta):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against white pepper, nutmeg, ham, egg, veal, pasta. 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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