Skip to main content
Main

Small Chicken Pie

A small pie filled with shredded chicken and vegetables, baked with a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Small 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the chicken until tender, then shred the meat.

  2. Boil the vegetables until soft.

  3. Combine the chicken and vegetables in a bowl, then season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a pie dish and cover with the pie crust.

  2. Brush the crust with melted butter.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30-40 minutes 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
Vegetables
Add bulk, moisture and mild sweetness to the filling.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the pastry shell.
Butter
Promotes browning and a rich golden colour on the crust surface.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Browning depends on surface temperature and moisture loss, so the crust's colour is a more reliable sign of doneness than the 30-40 minute range alone. Pull it when the crust is evenly golden.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, pepper, butter. 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.

More chicken pie recipes

Baked 7Crust 5with Oysters 5Oyster 5Puff Pastry 3 See all 355 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes