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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, oysters, and a butter‑flour‑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.

  2. Line the sides of a deep pie dish with pastry. Place the chicken in the dish. Add the water it boiled in.

  3. Season the chicken with butter, salt, and pepper. Cover the chicken loosely with crust.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until it boils. Thicken the milk with a little flour. Season the milk mixture with butter, salt, and pepper. Pour the hot mixture over the oysters.

Bake and serve

  1. About 15 minutes before the pie is done, lift the crust. Pour the oysters and sauce into the pie. 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 of the pie, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Oysters
Supply the main flavour of the filling and are set gently by the hot sauce.
Rich milk
Forms the base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that clings to the chicken and oysters.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the seasoned chicken and sauce.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and forms the crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Lifting the crust before adding the oysters. Oysters cook quickly and turn tough if overheated. Adding them about 15 minutes before the pie finishes, with the hot sauce, lets them warm through without becoming rubbery, while the crust keeps browning.

“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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