Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pasty

A pastry dish filled with boiled chicken, bacon, and thick white sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Pasty

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

  2. Line a deep round or oval tart tin with pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Cut up the boiled chicken, skin it, and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice while hot.

  2. Mince the boiled bacon and add it to the chicken.

  3. Remove large bones from the chicken or bone it entirely for better texture.

  4. Moisten the mixture with the thick white sauce.

Bake

  1. Fill the lined tart tin with the chicken mixture and cover with pastry if desired.

  2. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling, providing the main savoury meat texture.
Bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour and fat to the chicken filling.
Thick white sauce
Binds the chicken and bacon together and keeps the filling moist.
Pastry
Forms a crisp, golden case that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bone the chicken for texture. Large bones left in the filling are a hazard for the eater and can make the pie hard to cut and serve neatly. Removing them fully gives an even, pleasant texture throughout the filling.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes