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Curried Chicken Pie

A pie of curried chicken and rice baked with layers of fat salt pork and a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Curried Chicken 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 chicken

  1. Joint the chickens as for fricassee. Dust the jointed chickens with flour. Fry the chickens in dripping or lard until browned.

Layer the pie

  1. In a deep bake-dish, layer the chicken. Cover the chicken with slices of fat salt pork.

  2. Mix the boiled rice with butter and curry powder. Cover the chicken with some of this mixture.

  3. Add more chicken and pork. Add more rice. Repeat the layering process.

  4. Pour in the broth made by stewing the chicken parts in water, straining and seasoning it.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pie with a good crust. Cut a slit in the middle of the crust.

  2. Bake the pie covered at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes until browned.

  3. Wash the crust with beaten egg before serving.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Pork + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which is browned first to build flavour in the pie.
Boiled rice
Forms a absorbent layer that soaks up curry flavour and adds bulk to the filling.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the chicken and rice as the pie bakes, keeping them moist.
Curry powder
Gives the rice and filling their spiced, aromatic flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the seasoned rice layer.
Egg
Brushed on the crust to give it a glossy, browned finish.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until browned. Browning the flour-dusted chicken develops savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, and the flour helps the surface brown and thicken the juices. Pale chicken makes a bland pie.

“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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