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Chicken Pie

A pie filled with boiled chicken pieces, thickened gravy, and a buttered crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chickens.

  2. Cut the chickens into small pieces.

  3. Wash the pieces well.

  4. Cook the chicken pieces in water for 20 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix the flour with cold water to make a thin paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the gravy.

  3. Add a lump of butter.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Let it cool.

Make and assemble the pie

  1. Mix equal parts of lard and flour with a little salt for the paste.

  2. Roll the paste out thin.

  3. Line a deep pie dish with the rolled-out paste.

  4. Roll out the top crust to half the size needed.

  5. Spread butter on the top crust to a depth of ¼ inch.

  6. Roll it up and out again.

  7. Repeat this 2-3 times.

  8. Place the cooked chicken in the pie dish.

  9. Cover with the top crust.

  10. Pinch the edges together.

  11. Cut a slit in the top crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until slightly browned.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 meat that forms the filling of the pie.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and forms the structure of the pastry paste.
Lard
Makes the pastry paste short and tender by coating the flour.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the gravy and layered crust.

The step that matters

Spread butter on the top crust and roll it up repeatedly. Layering fat between sheets of dough creates flaky layers as the fat melts and steam lifts the pastry during baking. Even spreading keeps the layers consistent.

“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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