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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with boiled chicken, ham, eggs, forcemeat, and stock, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,243 recipes. Both carry 3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. 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

  1. Divide the chickens into neat joints, cutting off the legs and wings at the first joint.

  2. Boil the chicken joints with the backbones, necks, and gizzards for about 2 hours, then strain to use the stock.

  3. Parboil the livers, chop them finely, and mix with the forcemeat.

  4. Cut the ham into strips and the eggs into slices.

Assemble

  1. Layer the chicken pieces and prepared ingredients in a pie dish, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Fill the dish with stock.

  3. Roll out the pastry and cover the pie dish, ornamenting it and brushing with egg yolk.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours until the pastry has risen and set, then reduce the temperature and bake more slowly.

  2. Before serving, add the remaining hot stock to the pie.

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

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

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

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

  3. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the pie and provides meat and flavor.
Eggs
Hard-boiled slices add structure and body to the filling; the yolk glaze helps browning.
Ham or bacon
Adds savory, salty flavor to the filling.
Chicken stock
Provides moisture and savory flavor to the filling.
Pastry
Forms the crust that rises and sets to enclose the filling.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F, then reduce the heat. The high initial heat lifts and sets the pastry before the filling overcooks; lowering the temperature afterward lets the chicken cook through gently without burning the crust.

“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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