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Chicken Pie

Chicken pie with stewed chicken, gravy, biscuit crust, optional boiled egg and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season the disjointed chicken with salt, pepper, and butter, then dredge with flour.

  2. Cover the chicken with cold water and stew slowly until tender.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a 2-quart baking dish with a thin crust made of rich biscuit dough and place the chicken pieces inside.

  2. Pour the gravy over the chicken, then mix the beaten egg with the milk and add it to the dish.

  3. If desired, add slices of hard boiled egg and bits of boiled bacon.

  4. Ensure the dish is nearly full of gravy.

  5. Roll out the top crust thinly and place it loosely on top, pricking it to allow steam to escape.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 body of the pie and, as it stews, the meat and broth that become the gravy.
Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the liquid into a gravy that clings to the meat.
Rich biscuit dough
Forms the crust, which bakes to a tender, golden layer over the filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the gravy, softening its flavour and texture.
Egg
Enriches the gravy mixture and helps it set and brown slightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Ensure the dish is nearly full of gravy. Liquid fills the space around the chicken and crust; too little gravy leaves the filling dry and can let the crust bake unevenly, while the starch in flour thickens the liquid as it heats.

“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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