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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, veal stuffing, dressed ham, pastry, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,243 recipes. Both carry 3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil and cut up the chickens neatly.

  2. Dry the pieces and cook them over a slow fire for a few minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare veal stuffing or forcemeat and lay it at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Place the chicken pieces on top of the stuffing along with some pieces of dressed ham.

  3. Cover the dish with pastry.

  4. Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Serve

  1. When serving, add good gravy that is well seasoned and not too thick.

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 + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

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

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

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 partly cooked before baking.
Veal stuffing or forcemeat
Forms a savoury base layer under the chicken and ham.
Dressed ham
Adds salty, smoky meat flavour to the filling.
Pastry
Seals the dish and forms a crust that browns in the oven.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the finished pie when served.

The step that matters

Drying the chicken pieces before cooking. Surface moisture on parboiled chicken dilutes flavour and prevents proper browning, so the pieces should be patted dry before they are cooked over the fire.

“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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