Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Pie

A savory pie with stewed chicken, oysters, and a butter‑seasoned sauce baked under pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stew the chickens until tender.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the sides of a deep pie dish with pastry.

  2. Place the chicken and the reserved water in the dish.

  3. Season the filling with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover loosely with crust.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until it boils.

  2. Thicken the milk with a little flour.

  3. Season the sauce with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Pour the hot mixture over the oysters.

Finish and bake

  1. Lift the crust.

  2. Add the oysters and sauce.

  3. Return the pie to the oven to finish baking.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender when stewed in water.
Fine oysters
Supply the main flavor and texture of the filling alongside the sauce.
Rich milk
Forms the base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body when thickened.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that holds together in the pie.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and bakes to a golden finish.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with a little flour. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid to swell and thicken the sauce; added unevenly or undercooked, it can leave lumps or a raw starchy taste.

“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 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes