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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, ham or bacon, forcemeat balls, egg yolks, veal gravy, covered in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. 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 and layer

  1. Season the chicken joints with salt, white pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. In a dish, layer chicken, then ham or bacon, repeating until the dish is full.

  3. Add forcemeat balls and yolks of hard-boiled eggs in each layer.

  4. Pour a little veal gravy or water over the layers.

Bake

  1. Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which cooks through slowly under the pastry to become tender.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden crust that seals the dish and browns in the oven.
Veal gravy or water
Adds moisture so the layers steam and stay juicy during baking.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour and fat that seasons the chicken layers.

The step that matters

Pour a little veal gravy or water over the layers. Liquid added before the pastry goes on keeps the meat moist as it bakes, since the enclosed dish traps steam and dry meat would otherwise toughen.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mace, nutmeg, ham, egg, veal):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mace, nutmeg, ham, egg, veal. 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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