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Thanksgiving Chicken Pie

A savory pie with chicken, veal, ham, mushrooms, parsley, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with layers of veal and ham, alternating them.

  3. Season with chopped mushrooms, parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt, then add a little gravy.

  4. Arrange the chicken pieces neatly in the dish and place slices of hard boiled egg in each cavity.

  5. Repeat the seasoning and add more sauce.

  6. Lay thin slices of dressed ham on top.

Top and bake

  1. Cover the pie with puff pastry and decorate with pastry cut into leaf shapes.

  2. Brush the top with egg wash and bake 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

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

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

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 becomes tender during the long, slow bake.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm texture to the filling.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour that keeps the filling from drying out.
Veal
Contributes savoury meatiness and body to the layered filling.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky flavour to the layers and the top.

The step that matters

Covering the pie and baking for 1.5 hours. Pastry needs a sealed edge and an even oven to puff and brown. Too little sealing lets juices escape, and the filling needs the long bake to cook through safely.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, ham, mushroom, pepper, egg. 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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