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Chicken Pie

A savory pie filled with chicken, ham, veal forcemeat, and a spiced gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

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. Prepare a light puff pastry and line the sides of a pie dish.

  2. Parboil the chickens in a small amount of water, one at a time, then let them cool.

  3. Cut the chickens into neat joints.

  4. Stew the heads, necks, and feet with the onions and mace in the chicken broth.

  5. Reduce the gravy from the heads to a tea-cupful.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chicken joints, dressed ham, and veal forcemeat balls in the pie dish.

  2. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Add a little gravy, but not too much.

  4. Cover and decorate the top.

  5. Bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with cream, flour, and grated lemon rind before serving.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which is parboiled and then jointed for the filling.
Veal forcemeat balls
Add a rich, firm, savoury texture that contrasts with the tender chicken.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the filling instead of running out.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, softening its flavour.
Light puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky crust that browns in the oven.
Dressed ham
Contributes salty, savoury flavour to the layered filling.

The step that matters

Reduce the gravy before thickening it. Reducing concentrates the flavour of the stock from the heads, necks and feet. Adding too much liquid makes the filling soggy and the thickened gravy too thin to hold together.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, mace, ham, veal, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, mace, ham, veal, nutmeg, cream. 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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