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Chicken Pot-pie

A savory pie with chicken, ham, force-meat, and hard-boiled egg rings, topped with puff pastry and glazed with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the broth

  1. Skin and cut the chicken into joints.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the neck, legs, back bones, a little water, onion, savory herbs, and mace; stew for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the liquid; this will be used for gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pie dish, layer the chicken, then ham, then force-meat and hard-boiled egg rings.

  2. Season each layer with pounded mace, nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Pour in about ½ cup of water.

  4. Border the edge of the dish with puff pastry, cover it, and ornament the top.

  5. Brush the top with egg yolk to glaze.

  6. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  7. Once done, pour the gravy made from the bones into the top.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, and its bones give the strained liquid body for the gravy.
Force-meat
Forms a seasoned, dense layer that adds richness within the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and mild richness between the layers.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that browns in the oven.
Egg yolk
Gives the crust a glossy, golden browned finish.

The step that matters

Pouring the gravy at the end. Gravy added before baking can soak the pastry and make the crust soggy. Adding it once the pie is done keeps the crust crisp while the broth stays hot and rich.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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