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Chicken Pie

A baked chicken pie with ham or bacon, forcemeat balls, hard-boiled eggs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Season the cut-up chickens with white pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  2. Layer the chickens, slices of ham or bacon, forcemeat balls, and hard-boiled eggs in a pie dish.

  3. Pour in a little water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours.

  2. Prepare a gravy with veal or mutton, seasoned with herbs, onion, mace, and pepper.

  3. Serve the pie hot with the gravy.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Young chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it cooks in the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliceable texture and richness to the filling.
Forcemeat balls
Add savory, dense bites that flavor the filling as they cook.
Veal or mutton
Gives the gravy a rich, meaty body and savory depth.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mace, nutmeg, ham, egg, veal, onion. 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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