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Sweet Chicken Pie

A sweet pie made with chicken, raisins, preserved lemon, and a wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sweet Chicken Pie

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. Break the bones of the chickens and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Season the chicken pieces with mace, cinnamon, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the quartered yolks of hard-boiled eggs and live artichoke bottoms.

  4. Mix in the sun raisins, preserved citron, preserved lemon, eringo roots, marrow, rind of lemon, currants, and forcemeat balls.

  5. Butter the bottom of a pie dish and fill it with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place 1 pound of fresh butter on top of the filling and cover with a pie lid.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  3. Boil 1 pint of white wine, sweeten to taste, and thicken with 2 yolks of eggs.

  4. Pour the hot wine sauce over the pie before serving.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + artichoketop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Forms the main meat filling, providing savory body and structure once cooked.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and helps the top crust brown.
Yolks of eggs
Thicken the hot wine sauce as they gently set with heat, giving it body.
White wine
Forms the base of the sauce, adding acidity and moisture to the finished pie.
Sun raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the filling as they plump during baking.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that enriches the filling's texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening the wine sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the boiling wine is too hot or added too quickly, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding a little hot liquid to the yolks first and whisking gently helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cinnamon, egg, artichoke, raisin, lemon, currant):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cinnamon, egg, artichoke, raisin, lemon, currant. 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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