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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with shredded chicken, celery, and stock, encased in biscuit dough crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 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 the chicken

  1. Cook the hen until tender and it falls from the bones.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Remove the fat and shred the meat.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a deep baking dish with biscuit dough, slightly thicker than pie crust.

  2. Add the shredded meat, salt, pepper, chopped celery, and chicken stock.

  3. Dredge the mixture with flour.

  4. Cover with a top crust, slash it, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

Serve

  1. Make gravy from the remaining broth to pour over the pie before serving.

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

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

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + biscuittop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Celery + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 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

Hen
Provides the shredded meat that forms the body of the filling.
Flour
Dredging thickens the filling so it holds together rather than running out of the crust.
Rich biscuit dough
Forms the lining and top crust that enclose the filling and brown in the oven.
Chicken stock
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the filling and the gravy.

The step that matters

Dredge the mixture with flour. Flour mixed into the wet filling thickens it as it heats. Without enough, the juices stay thin and can soak the crust from underneath.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, chicken, flour, biscuit):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, chicken, flour, biscuit. 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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