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Chicken Patties

Chicken patties made with shredded chicken, pepper, optional celery and oysters, thickened gravy, and baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Patties

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Patties

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 the filling

  1. Remove the chicken from the pot.

  2. Pull the chicken into small pieces using a fork.

  3. Season the gravy (about 2 cups) with pepper, celery, and oysters.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a little flour.

  5. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  6. Salt the chicken while cooking.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the chicken and gravy.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Tender chicken
Provides the main filling, with meat that pulls apart into soft shreds.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it holds together inside the pastry instead of running out.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that rises and browns in the oven around the filling.

The step that matters

Bring the gravy to a boil. Flour only thickens fully when the liquid reaches a boil and the starch swells. A gravy that is merely warm stays thin and can make the pastry soggy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, oyster, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, oyster, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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