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Modern Chicken Pie

A layered pie of boned chicken and sausage meat, encased in pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Modern 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 filling

  1. Remove all bones from the chicken joints and season the flesh with salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Line a dish with a thin layer of pastry.

  3. Spread a layer of sausage meat over the pastry.

  4. Place a layer of boned chicken joints on top of the sausage meat.

  5. Continue layering sausage meat and chicken until the dish is full.

Bake and serve

  1. Roll out the pastry for the cover, trim the edges, and make an incision in the top.

  2. Glaze the top with egg yolk and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. If the crust browns too quickly, cover it with writing paper.

  4. Serve the pie hot or cold, but cold is preferred.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,656 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken (in the method)
Provides the main body of the pie, becoming tender and moist as it cooks through.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat that keeps the layered filling moist and well seasoned.
Pastry
Forms the structure that holds the layers together and browns to a crisp exterior.
Egg yolk
Glazes the top, promoting a golden, glossy browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Covering the crust during baking. Pastry browns faster than the dense filling heats through, so the crust can scorch before the meat is cooked. Covering it with paper slows surface browning while the interior finishes cooking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, meat, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, meat, 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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