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French Chicken Pie

A savory pie with chicken, veal, mushrooms, sausage balls, and forcemeat, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

French 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

  1. Dip the chicken joints and veal pieces in seasoned flour.

  2. Place the chicken and veal in a pie dish.

  3. Fry the mushrooms in butter, then add salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the fried mushrooms to the meat in the pie dish.

  2. Lay in the sausage meat balls and forcemeat balls.

  3. Pour the jelly stock over the mixture.

  4. Cover with rough puff pastry and bake at 350°F (175°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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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 baking.
Veal
Adds more meat and a mild flavour to the filling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Jelly stock
Adds moisture and body that helps the filling cook through.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Covering with rough puff pastry and baking. The pastry must seal the dish so the filling stays moist while the meat cooks through over 1.5 hours. Baking at 350°F gives the pastry time to rise and brown without drying the contents.

“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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