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Chicken Pie

A savory pie made with chicken, bacon, onions, herbs, and a short crust pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pluck the chicken.

  2. Draw the chicken, removing the feet and head.

  3. Joint the chicken into four pieces: legs in halves, back into four, neck in half, and sever the wings.

Simmer the filling

  1. Place the chicken pieces in an enamel pie dish with the liver, heart, gizzard, bacon, parsley, onion, pepper, salt, and thyme.

  2. Cover the dish with cold water.

  3. Cover the dish with a lid.

  4. Gently simmer for nearly 4 hours.

  5. Stand an egg cup in the center.

  6. Add the quartered hard boiled eggs, peas, and stewed mushrooms if using.

Make the crust and bake

  1. Dampen the edges of the dish.

  2. Make a short crust pastry.

  3. Line the edges of the dish.

  4. Cover with pastry.

  5. Cut pastry strips into squares.

  6. Pinch one corner.

  7. Arrange them from the corners towards the center.

  8. Flute the edges with a fork.

  9. Brush with beaten egg.

  10. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  11. Serve cold.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 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 meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky savour that flavours the simmering broth.
Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs add firm, mild texture and body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat to the crust, giving it a short, tender, flaky texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the short crust pastry.

The step that matters

Gently simmer the chicken. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. Long, slow cooking breaks down connective tissue, so the chicken becomes soft without falling apart.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, onion, pepper, thyme, egg, mushroom):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, onion, pepper, thyme, egg, mushroom. 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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