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Chicken Pie, a LA Keene

A chicken pie with veal and ham scallops, mushrooms, parsley, pepper, salt, white sauce, plover's eggs, dressed ham, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pie, a LA Keene

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with alternating layers of veal and ham scallops.

  3. Season with chopped mushrooms, parsley, pepper, and salt, then add a little white sauce.

  4. Arrange the chicken pieces neatly in the dish and place a plover's egg in each cavity.

  5. Repeat the seasoning and add more white sauce.

  6. Top with thin slices of dressed ham.

Top and bake

  1. Cover the pie with puff pastry and decorate with pastry cut into leaf shapes.

  2. Brush the top with egg wash and bake 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Scallop + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 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
Forms the main body of the pie, providing savory meat that cooks through during baking.
Veal and ham scallops
Layered through the dish to add meaty flavor and substance to the filling.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that puffs and browns in the oven.
Plover's eggs
Set within the chicken pieces to enrich the filling as they cook.

The step that matters

Baking the pie for 1.5 hours. Chicken must cook fully through under the pastry while the puff pastry browns without burning. Too little time leaves the meat underdone, and too high heat darkens the crust before the filling is ready.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, scallop, veal, ham, mushroom, pepper, sauce):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, scallop, veal, ham, mushroom, pepper, sauce. 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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