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Chicken Pie

A baked dish of seasoned chicken pieces covered with bacon and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the chicken pieces with pepper and coarse sea salt, adding mace if desired.

  2. Place the chicken pieces in a dish with the breasts facing upwards.

  3. Lay thin slices of bacon on top of the chicken.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish with a layer of puff pastry.

  2. Bake until the pastry is golden and the chicken is cooked through.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Chicken + macetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cooks through under the pastry.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seeps down into the chicken as it cooks.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until the chicken is cooked through. The pastry browns quickly, so it can look done before the chicken inside is. Because the chicken is under a sealed layer of pastry, its doneness is hard to judge by sight, so the cook should check that the meat is fully cooked rather than relying on the golden top.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper. 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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