The Humble Chicken Pot Pie
Centuries Beneath a Crust (Coffyn)
Tonight, four little chicken pot pies are going into my oven. Chicken breast, carrots, potato, peas, mushrooms, and shallot will be tucked beneath pastry with a rich gravy seasoned with Eastern Mediterranean spices. It is the sort of dinner that feels familiar before you even take the first bite: warm gravy, tender chicken, vegetables, and that wonderful moment when a spoon breaks through the browned pastry on top. It is humble food, and it is also the latest chapter in a cooking idea that has been evolving for centuries.
Chicken pot pie did not suddenly appear in the form we recognize today. Long before cooks were combining chicken with peas and carrots in creamy gravy, they were putting poultry into pastry with fat, spices, and whatever else was available to them. Follow those pies through history and something wonderful happens. The chicken remains. The pastry remains. Nearly everything else changes.
When the Pastry Was the Pot
One of the earliest surviving recipes specifically identified as a chicken pie comes from the medieval northern European recipe tradition preserved in the Libellus de Arte Coquinaria. The collection survives through four manuscripts in Danish, Icelandic, and Low German, and the recipe tradition dates to roughly the thirteenth century. The recipe is called Koken wan honer, or Chicken Pie.
The cook is instructed to make a shell or vessel from dough. A hen is cut into pieces and placed inside along with bacon cut about the size of peas. Pepper and cumin season the chicken, while egg yolks beaten with saffron are added before the pastry vessel goes into the oven. Even here, the versions differ from one another. The Danish text calls for cumin. The Low German version of the same recipe leaves it out and tells the cook to cover the dough vessel with a lid of dough before baking.
The dish was already drifting before anyone thought to write it down twice.
Stop there for a moment and imagine the flavor. Rich hen and bacon, the sharp warmth of pepper, earthy and aromatic cumin, egg yolks bringing richness and body, saffron adding color, fragrance, and another layer of luxury.
There are no carrots. There are no peas. There are no potatoes. There is certainly no can of cream of chicken soup.
Yet the underlying idea is surprisingly familiar: chicken, fat, seasoning, moisture, and pastry are brought together and baked.
The pastry itself is important to the story. Medieval pastry could be considerably sturdier than the tender, flaky pie crust we expect today, and English culinary manuscripts used words such as cofyn for pastry cases. The pastry could function as a container, holding the filling and its juices as they cooked.
In a very literal sense, the crust could be the pot.
From Coffyn to Chicken Pie
As cooking equipment and pastry making changed, so did the pie. By the eighteenth century, chicken pie had become something quite different from that medieval combination of hen, bacon, cumin, and saffron.
Hannah Glasse's enormously successful The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747, gives us a wonderfully elaborate example.
Her chicken pie begins with puff pastry and two chickens seasoned with pepper, salt, and a little beaten mace, but she does not stop there. A forcemeat of veal and suet, bound with breadcrumbs and egg yolk and seasoned with anchovy, lemon peel, and thyme, is laid around the dish and rolled into balls. Sweetbreads go in, along with truffles and morels, artichoke bottoms, cocks-combs if you have them, and an ox palate boiled tender. When the pie comes from the oven, good gravy is added.
This is not yet our humble weeknight chicken pot pie.
In fact, it is rather grand.
But look at what has happened to the flavor. The medieval cook's pepper, cumin, and saffron have given way to pepper, mace, herbs, lemon, anchovy, fungi, and rich gravy. The pastry has changed as well. Instead of simply functioning as a sturdy container, pastry is becoming an increasingly important part of the pleasure of eating the pie.
The structure remains recognizable, since we still have chicken, seasoning, pastry, and moisture.
The expression has changed entirely.
An American Chicken Pie
Then the story crosses into an American cookbook.
In 1796, Amelia Simmons published American Cookery, an enormously important book in American food history and the first known cookbook written by an American and published in the United States. Among its recipes is one titled simply, "A Chicken Pie."
Simmons's version calls for six chickens. They are picked and cleaned, jointed, seasoned with salt and pepper, and layered inside a pastry-lined deep dish with slices of butter. A thick pastry goes over the top before the pie is baked for an hour and a half.
And she uses a remarkable amount of butter: one and a half pounds, laid in slice by slice until both the chickens and the butter are used up.
Simmons also provides an alternative method for a poor oven. The chicken could be partially cooked with half a pound of butter first, with the remaining butter and some of its gravy placed into the pie. The rest of the gravy was thickened separately and added after the pie came from the oven.
Now we are getting somewhere.
We have chicken, pastry, seasoning, butter, and thickened gravy.
The family resemblance to modern chicken pot pie is becoming much easier to see.
Chicken Pot Pie Through Time
Put these recipes beside one another and the evolution becomes even clearer.
In the medieval kitchen, the flavor might be hen, bacon, pepper, cumin, and saffron, enclosed in a sturdy dough vessel.
By Hannah Glasse's eighteenth-century kitchen, we find chicken, mace, forcemeat, sweetbreads, truffles and morels, and a good deal of gravy, covered with puff pastry.
In Amelia Simmons's American kitchen of 1796, the formula becomes chicken, salt, pepper, a great deal of butter, pastry, and thickened gravy.
Over the generations that followed, the familiar vegetables increasingly entered the picture, and chicken pie and pot pie developed into numerous regional and household versions. Eventually, carrots, peas, potatoes, onions, celery, creamy or flour-thickened gravy, and tender pastry became part of what many Americans now picture when someone says chicken pot pie.
And today?
Well, that depends entirely upon whose kitchen you walk into, and that may be the most important part of the story.
What Happened to the Flavor?
As the Spicekeeper, this is where the story becomes particularly interesting to me.
We often talk about historical dishes by concentrating on ingredients. What meat did they use? What vegetables were available? What kind of pastry did they make? But seasoning tells another part of the story.
That medieval chicken pie was not simply an old version of our pot pie with a few vegetables missing. Pepper, cumin, bacon, egg yolks, and saffron would have created an entirely different eating experience.
Hannah Glasse's mace, herbs, mushrooms, lemon, anchovy, and gravy changed it again.
Amelia Simmons pared the seasoning back to salt and pepper while relying heavily on chicken, butter, pastry, and gravy for richness.
Each cook was working within a culinary language that made sense at her own table.
Which raises one of my favorite questions: If you wanted this flavor, what would you have to do to keep it?
And its companion question: If you wanted the dish to become something new, what could you change without losing the dish itself?
Chicken pot pie gives us a rather beautiful answer.
You can change quite a lot.
Tonight's Place on the Timeline
My four little pies contain chicken breast, carrots, potato, peas, mushrooms, and shallot. The mushrooms and shallot cook in butter first. Then I bloom Eastern Mediterranean seasoning in that warm fat before adding flour, chicken broth, and milk to build the gravy.
That blooming step matters.
Dried spices do not need to remain little flecks floating through a sauce. Brief contact with warm fat helps their aromatic compounds move into the butter, which then carries those flavors throughout the gravy. The seasoning becomes part of the dish rather than something simply sprinkled onto it.
Then the chicken and vegetables go into the gravy, the filling goes into four small baking dishes, pastry goes over the top, and into the oven they go.
My version is not an attempt to recreate Koken wan honer. It is not Hannah Glasse's chicken pie, and it is not Amelia Simmons's chicken pie.
It should not be.
It is simply our place on the timeline.
From Their Kitchen to Ours
Eastern Mediterranean Chicken Pot Pies
Makes 4 individual pies
This is not a reconstruction of any of the historical pies above. It is my own place on their long timeline. Chicken and pastry remain at the heart of the dish, but mushrooms, vegetables, creamy gravy, and Eastern Mediterranean seasoning speak to the kitchen in which I am cooking today.
Bloom Classification
Medium Intensity + Butter Bloom
The Eastern Mediterranean seasoning is bloomed briefly in butter after the mushrooms and shallot have cooked. This gives the dried spices direct contact with warm fat before the liquid for the gravy is introduced.
Why the Bloom Works
A pot pie filling presents an interesting problem for dried seasoning. If we simply stir the spices into chicken broth and milk, some of their aromatic character can become muted beneath the flour, dairy, vegetables, and pastry.
Butter gives us another route.
Cooking the mushrooms and shallot first removes excess moisture and begins building the savory foundation of the gravy. When the seasoning is added to the warm butter for a brief bloom, fat-soluble aromatic compounds begin moving into that butter. Once the broth and milk are added, the flavored fat is dispersed throughout the gravy.
Instead of finding seasoning sitting in little flecks throughout the sauce, we have built its flavor into the gravy itself.
Ingredients
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into ½-inch pieces (454 g)
1 medium potato, peeled and cut into small cubes, about 1 cup (150 g)
2 medium carrots, diced, about 1 cup (125 g)
1 medium shallot, finely chopped, about ⅓ cup (50 g)
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced or chopped (227 g)
¾ cup frozen peas (100 g)
2 tablespoons Eastern Mediterranean seasoning, divided
3 tablespoons unsalted butter (42 g)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour (24 g)
1¾ cups chicken broth (414 ml)
½ cup whole milk or half-and-half (118 ml)
Salt, to taste
1 package refrigerated premade pie crusts, 2 crusts
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, optional, for finishing the pastry
Method
Heat the oven to 400°F (204°C).
Place the diced potato and carrots in a small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, just until they begin to soften. Drain and set aside. They should still have some firmness because they will continue cooking inside the pies.
Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and 1 tablespoon Eastern Mediterranean seasoning. Cook for about 4 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the outside of the chicken is cooked and beginning to brown. Transfer the chicken to a plate.
Reduce the heat to medium and add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Add the shallot and mushrooms and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, until the mushrooms have released their moisture and begun to brown.
Add the remaining 1 tablespoon Eastern Mediterranean seasoning to the butter, mushrooms, and shallot. Stir continuously for 20 to 30 seconds, just until the spices become fragrant. Do not let them scorch.
Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir continuously for about 1 minute. Gradually add the chicken broth while stirring, followed by the milk or half-and-half. Bring the gravy to a gentle simmer and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until noticeably thickened.
Return the chicken to the skillet and add the carrots, potatoes, and frozen peas. Stir gently and simmer for another 2 minutes. Taste before adding salt. The gravy should coat the chicken and vegetables rather than pool around them. Remember that the filling will release a little additional moisture as it bakes.
Divide the filling among four individual pie dishes or oven-safe ramekins.
Cut the prepared pie crust into pieces large enough to cover each dish with a small overhang. Lay the pastry over the filling and crimp or press it around the edges. Cut two or three small vents in each crust. Brush with the egg wash, if using.
Set the four pies on a baking sheet and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the pastry is deeply golden and the gravy is bubbling around the edges.
Allow the pies to rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Best With
These little pies need very little beside them. A simple green salad or lightly dressed green beans gives the rich gravy and pastry some contrast. They are also perfectly capable of being supper all by themselves.
Blooming Notes
Watch the skillet rather than the clock when blooming the seasoning. Twenty seconds may be enough. You are looking for the moment when the aroma suddenly becomes stronger and rounder.
There is another reason for dividing the seasoning in this recipe. The first tablespoon seasons the chicken directly. The second is bloomed into the butter that becomes the foundation of the gravy. We are seasoning both the ingredient and the medium surrounding it.
That is how we keep the flavor from disappearing beneath the crust.
Through the Kitchen Window
Perhaps that is why humble foods can sometimes tell history better than grand ones.
The story of chicken pot pie is not interesting because cooks carefully preserved one recipe for hundreds of years.
It is interesting because they did not.
They adapted it.
A sturdy medieval pastry vessel became increasingly refined pastry. Pepper, cumin, and saffron gave way to mace and elaborate savory seasonings. Later recipes could rely on the richness of butter, chicken, and gravy. Vegetables came aboard. The gravy became creamy. Modern baking dishes took over the structural work once performed by heavy pastry, allowing our crusts to become tender and flaky.
Generation after generation changed the dish to fit its ingredients, its technology, its tastes, and its table.
Yet beneath all those changes lies an idea that a cook from centuries ago might still recognize.
Take the chicken you have. Season it well. Give it something rich and savory to cook in. Put pastry over or around it.
Then feed the people at your table.
Tonight, there happen to be four little pies on mine, and several centuries of cooks standing quietly behind them.
From the Spicekeeper
There is a temptation when we cook from history to believe that preservation means keeping everything exactly as it was.
Old recipes tell us something different.
The medieval versions of Koken wan honer do not even agree completely with one another. Hannah Glasse's eighteenth-century chicken pie would have looked extravagant beside them. Amelia Simmons changed the conversation again in an American kitchen. Generations of unnamed cooks kept changing it after her.
What survived was not one perfect recipe.
What survived was the idea.
Chicken. Pastry. Richness. Seasoning. A way of turning what was available into something satisfying enough to place in the middle of the table.
That matters to me as the Spicekeeper because preserving flavor does not always mean freezing it in time. Sometimes preservation means understanding what made a dish work well enough that we know what can change and what needs to remain.
My Eastern Mediterranean chicken pot pie belongs to that tradition. I changed the vegetables. I changed the seasoning. I bloom those spices in butter because I want their flavor carried throughout the gravy. I use a modern baking dish and premade pastry because those are the tools available in my kitchen.
But I am still asking essentially the same question cooks have asked for centuries:
I have chicken, pastry, seasoning, and people to feed. What can I make from them?
That is not leaving history behind.
That is how a living cooking tradition continues.
Taste is how memory travels.
The Spicekeeper Oak City Spice Blends
Further Reading and Original Recipes
Libellus de Arte Coquinaria, “Koken wan honer” or Chicken Pie. This medieval northern European chicken pie calls for a dough shell filled with hen, bacon, pepper, cumin, egg yolks, and saffron. The recipe tradition survives in several related medieval manuscripts.
Rudolf Grewe and Constance B. Hieatt, Libellus de Arte Coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book (2001). This scholarly edition brings together and compares the surviving versions of this important early northern European cookery collection.
The Forme of Cury, c. 1390. Compiled by the master cooks of Richard II of England, this collection provides another window into medieval cookery and the world of richly seasoned dishes, pastry, meat, and the medieval kitchen.
Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published 1747. Glasse's “To make a Chicken-Pie” takes us into a very different culinary world, with puff paste, mace, forcemeat, sweetbreads, truffles, morels, artichoke bottoms, and gravy.
View The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy at the Library of Congress
Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, “A Chicken Pie,” 1796. Simmons layers chicken seasoned with salt and pepper with a remarkable quantity of butter inside a deep pastry-lined dish. Her alternate method also describes thickening the remaining gravy and adding it after baking.
Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, original 1796 edition. For readers who would rather turn the digital pages of the historic volume itself, the Library of Congress has digitized the original book.
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