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Chicken Pie

A pie of stewed chicken and oysters baked in a buttery, seasoned 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 filling

  1. Stew the chickens until tender.

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

  3. Place the chicken and the ½ cup of boiling water in the dish.

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

Make the oyster sauce

  1. In a pot, heat the milk (or oyster liquor) until boiling.

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

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the oysters.

Bake and finish

  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

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender from stewing before baking.
Milk
Forms the base of the creamy sauce that coats the oysters.
Flour
Thickens the boiling milk so the sauce holds together rather than running.
Oysters
Supply the distinctive briny flavour of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavour and a smooth mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters late. Oysters are delicate and overcook quickly, becoming tough and shrunken with prolonged heat. Adding them about 15 minutes before the pie finishes keeps them tender and juicy while the filling still gets hot through.

“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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