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Chicken, or Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with chicken, sweetbread, truffles, morels, artichokes, and egg yolks, topped with puff pastry and served with rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken, or Rabbit 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.

Assemble the pie

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with puff pastry and line the sides with a thin layer of forcemeat.

  3. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, then place some in the dish.

  4. Add the sweetbread, truffles, morels, artichokes, and chopped egg yolks on top.

  5. Pour in enough water to nearly fill the pie, then cover with pastry.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Once out of the oven, pour in rich gravy thickened with flour and butter.

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. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + artichoketop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Truffle + artichoketop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together240 recipes

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

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

Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling.
Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as the pie bakes in its juices.
Sweetbread
Adds a soft, rich texture and a delicate meaty flavour to the filling.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that perfumes the whole pie.
Morels
Add a deep, earthy flavour and a chewy texture to the filling.
Rich gravy
Thickened with flour and butter, it adds moisture and a savoury sauce after baking.

“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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