Name: Cold Turkey or Chicken Pie
Ingredients: Cold turkey or chicken, chopped fine; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Gravy; Pie crust

Why it works: Turkey and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,636 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cold Turkey or Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble and bake

In a bowl, mix the chopped cold turkey or chicken with salt, pepper, and gravy.
Lay the pie crust around the edge of a platter and fill it with the meat mixture.
Cover the pie with more pie crust and bake until golden brown.

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.

Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,636 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold turkey or chicken: Forms the main filling, giving the pie its substance and meaty texture.
Gravy: Moistens the chopped meat and helps hold the filling together.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns in the oven for a golden finish.

“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.