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Dessert

Chicken Pie, a LA Reine

A savory pie made with chicken, veal, ham, mushrooms, parsley, and white sauce, topped with 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 Reine

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

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

Assemble the pie

  1. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with layers of veal and ham scallops, alternating them.

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

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

  4. Repeat the seasoning and add more sauce, then lay thin slices of dressed ham on top.

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

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it cooks slowly in the pie.
White sauce
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling creamy rather than dry during baking.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, golden crust that encloses and seals the filling.
Plover's eggs
Set during baking to add a rich, creamy element within the chicken cavities.
Chopped mushrooms
Add earthy savoriness and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Brush the top with egg wash. An even egg wash gives the puff pastry a glossy, golden browned surface, since the egg proteins and sugars brown in the oven. Uneven coverage can leave pale or patchy spots.

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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