Name: Chicken Pie
Ingredients: 2 young chickens; Veal stuffing or forcemeat (see recipes 317 or 318); dressed ham, cut into pieces; pastry for covering the pie; gravy, well seasoned

Why it works: Chicken and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,243 recipes. Both carry 3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

2 young chickens
Veal stuffing or forcemeat (see recipes 317 or 318)
dressed ham, cut into pieces
pastry for covering the pie
gravy, well seasoned

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Parboil and cut up the chickens neatly.
Dry the chicken pieces and set them over low heat for a few minutes.

Assemble and bake

Place veal stuffing at the bottom of a baking dish.
Arrange the chicken pieces and dressed ham on top of the stuffing.
Cover with pastry and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Serve

When serving, add well-seasoned gravy, ensuring it is not too thick.

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.

Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).
Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 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

Young chickens: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through parboiling and slow baking.
Veal stuffing: Forms a moist base layer that flavours the chicken as it bakes.
Dressed ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour that stands out against the mild chicken.
Gravy: Adds moisture and seasoning to the finished pie when served.

The step that matters

Cover with pastry and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours. Baking at a low, steady temperature for a long time lets the chicken cook through and become tender without drying out. Too high a heat can toughen the meat and burn the pastry before the filling is done.

“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.