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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, organ meats, spices, lemon pickle, and optional macaroni, baked under puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and singe the chickens.

  2. If the chickens are young, keep them whole and truss; if large, cut them into joints and remove the skin.

  3. Wash and dry the chicken pieces.

  4. Season the chicken pieces with coarse sea salt, white pepper, grated nutmeg, and mace.

  5. If the chicken is whole, place a bit of butter wrapped in flour and some mixed spices inside the chicken.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the chicken in a dish with the livers, gizzards, and hearts, all well seasoned.

  2. Add ½ pint of white stock, ⅓ cup of white wine, 1 tablespoon of lemon pickle (or pickled mushrooms), and the yolks of 5 hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Cover the dish with puff pastry.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

Prepare and add the macaroni

  1. Wash the macaroni.

  2. Break the macaroni into small bits.

  3. Simmer the macaroni in milk and water for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the macaroni.

  5. Add the cooked macaroni and ¾ ounce of butter to the chicken dish, omitting lemon pickle or mushrooms.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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 becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks under pastry.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce with richness and a thickening, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps bind the butter into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce and filling.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savoury stock.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour under pastry. The pastry must brown and set while the chicken cooks through. Too low a heat leaves the pastry pale and soggy, and the meat may not reach a safe temperature inside the sealed dish.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, nutmeg, mace, butter, flour, white wine, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, nutmeg, mace, butter, flour, white wine, lemon. 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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