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Chicken Pie

A baked pie filled with boiled chicken, gravy, butter, and flour, topped with a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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 chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until tender.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt.

  3. Remove the white meat and a little dark meat from the bones.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line deep pie plates with the rich pie crust.

  2. Place the meat in the pie plates.

  3. Pour gravy over the chicken.

  4. Add butter.

  5. Add a little flour to thicken.

  6. Cover with the pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 cooked meat that forms the filling of the pie.
Rich pie crust
Forms the enclosing shell and top that holds the filling together while baking.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor so the filling stays juicy rather than dry.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it holds together in the baked pie instead of running out.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavor and a tender texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Add a little flour to thicken. Flour must be evenly distributed in the liquid, or it clumps and leaves the gravy lumpy or thin. Starch thickens properly only once it is hydrated and heated, so the filling sets during baking rather than running out when the pie is cut.

“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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