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Chicken Pie

A savory pie of chicken joints, forcemeat balls, eggs, ham or bacon, topped with puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 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

  1. Dredge the chicken joints lightly with flour and season with white pepper, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne.

Assemble

  1. In a pie dish, place the forcemeat balls and halved hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Lay the chicken pieces on top, along with slices of ham or bacon.

  3. Add the water and white gravy.

Bake

  1. Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long bake.
Flour
Lightly coats the chicken so it helps thicken the juices and gives a little browning.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, rich filling that holds its shape within the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that rises and browns in the oven.
White gravy
Adds moisture and savoury body to the filling.

The step that matters

Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.. The pastry needs a hot oven to puff and set before the filling overcooks. The long bake lets the chicken become tender and cooked through, so check that the filling is hot and the pastry is well browned.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, nutmeg, pepper, egg, ham. 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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