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Chicken Pie

A layered chicken pie with bacon, potatoes, onions, and a biscuit crust, baked slowly with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. 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 dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Add the lard and enough milk or water to make a biscuit dough consistency. Mix well, but do not knead.

  4. Roll out more than half of the dough thicker than pie crust and line a greased 2-gallon earthen pan.

Layer the filling

  1. Cut the chicken as for frying and layer it in the pan with salt, pepper, onion, bacon or pork, and thinly sliced potatoes.

  2. Continue layering with chicken and seasonings until all chicken is used.

Cover and bake

  1. Roll out the remaining dough to cover the top of the pan, cut an X in the center, and seal the edges.

  2. Place the butter over the opening in the top crust.

  3. Fill the pan with boiling water over the butter and cook slowly for 2 hours.

  4. If the crust browns too much, cover it with paper.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, wrap a large napkin around the crock and place it on the table with a heavy plate underneath.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough structure that encloses the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the dough as it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and flaky.
Young chicken
Provides the main meat, which cooks slowly in the enclosed pan.
Irish potatoes
Add starch and body to the filling as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling and crust.

The step that matters

Cooking the crust with the lid on. Slow cooking in a sealed pan gently cooks the chicken and potatoes. The crust can brown too fast, so covering it with paper helps prevent scorching while the filling cooks through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, chicken, pepper, pork, potato, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, chicken, pepper, pork, potato, butter. 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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