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Chicken Pie

A savory pie with cooked chicken, gravy, and a crust made from flour, butter, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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 filling

  1. Cook the chicken until tender and remove the large bones.

  2. Season the cooking liquid with salt and pepper for gravy.

  3. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup of rich milk, 1 beaten egg yolk, and a lump of butter, then stir the mixture and pour it into the gravy.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, combine 1 pint of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and lard, then mix with buttermilk that has a pinch of baking soda added.

  2. Knead lightly and roll to ½ inch thickness.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour enough gravy over the chicken to cover it, and sprinkle with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cut the dough into diamond shapes and lay over the top.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the filling and its savory meat flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture into a smooth, stable gravy.
Egg yolk
Enriches the gravy, adding richness and helping it set smoothly.
Lard
Shortens the dough, keeping the crust tender and flaky rather than tough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crust rise and become light.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda, aiding rise and tenderness in the crust.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough to an even ½ inch. Uneven thickness makes parts of the crust bake too slowly or too fast. Keeping the dough light and not overworked, since gluten develops with kneading, keeps the crust tender rather than tough.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, milk, egg, butter, buttermilk. 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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