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Modern Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with boned chicken joints and sausage meat, topped with pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 bones from the chicken joints and season the flesh with salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

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

  3. Spread a layer of sausage meat moistened with 1-2 teaspoons of cold water over the pastry.

  4. Place a layer of boned chicken joints on top, followed by more sausage meat, repeating until the dish is full.

Cover and bake

  1. Roll out a cover of pastry about ½ inch thick and secure it at the edges.

  2. Trim off excess pastry and make an incision in the top.

  3. Decorate with pastry leaves and glaze the top with egg yolk.

  4. Bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  5. If the crust browns too quickly, cover it with wadding paper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold, but cold is recommended.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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
Provides the main meat filling, with its flesh seasoned before layering.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist as it bakes.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Gives the crust a glossy golden browning when brushed on top.

The step that matters

Watching the crust colour in the oven. The long bake at high heat can brown the pastry before the filling is cooked through. Covering the top with wadding paper slows browning while the centre finishes cooking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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