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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with stewed chicken, oysters, and a buttery milk sauce, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 chicken until tender.

Assemble the pie

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

  2. Place the chicken in the dish and add the water it boiled in.

  3. Season with butter, salt, and pepper, then cover loosely with crust.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. In a pot, heat the milk until it boils.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour and season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the oysters.

Bake and serve

  1. About 15 minutes before the pie is done, lift the crust and pour the oysters into the pie.

  2. 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

Chicken
Provides the main body and meat of the pie after stewing until tender.
Oysters
Supply the main seafood flavour and savoury character of the filling.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce that binds and moistens the filling.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk so the sauce clings to the oysters and chicken.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Pouring the oysters into the pie. Oysters cook quickly and turn tough and shrunken if overbaked, so they are added late, about 15 minutes before the pie is done, to keep them tender.

“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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