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Chicken Pie

A pie filled with chicken, ham, sausage, herbs, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Wash and dry the chickens, then cut them into joints.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the trimmings, bones, salt, peppercorns, mace, onion, and cover with water or white stock.

  3. Add a bunch of herbs and simmer the mixture for a long time, skimming well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the edges of a pie dish with pastry, then layer in the chicken, followed by strips of ham and sausage meat.

  2. Cover with more pastry and seal the edges before baking.

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

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

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

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

  3. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 and, with the bones, the flavour base for the stock.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the meat filling.
Sausage meat
Adds richness and fat to the filling, keeping the meat moist.
Eggs
Bind and set the filling and add richness to the dish.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Skimming the simmering stock. Simmering for a long time draws impurities and fat to the surface; skimming them keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, meat, egg, onion. 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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