What the Oven Marvel chicken pie tasted like

What did the Oven Marvel chicken pie look like?

The Oven Marvel chicken pie was flat. Not a little low: properly flat, a single-serve round disc with a sheet of puff pastry on top and another underneath (Burpple). Miss Tam Chiak’s tasters noted that it looked flat (Miss Tam Chiak, 2019), and Leslie Tay recorded Facebook commenters complaining that it was too flat and nothing like a British pie (ieatishootipost, 2013). If you grew up with tall, domed bakery pies, the first sight of it was a small surprise. Then you bit into it, and the shape stopped mattering.

The top baked to a deep, even gold. One blogger called the pastry golden, crisp and delicate (springtomorrow, 2014). Around the rim you could see the layers, stacked like the pages of a paperback left out in the rain and then dried in an oven.

What was the pastry like?

The pastry was puff pastry made in the shop, and it was made with butter (ieatishootipost, 2013). That is the single most important fact on this page. Leslie Tay picked it out in 2013: the aroma was butter, not the waxy smell of margarine or hydrogenated fat, and he was surprised by how little oil had pooled under the pie.

Reviewers describe two textures in the same bite, and they agree with each other across eleven years:

• The top was crisp and shattered. SETHLUI.com described it as crisp on top (SETHLUI.com, 2020), and slowchomp wrote of thin, fragrant pastry that seemed to melt away (slowchomp, 2015).
• The inside layers were soft and slightly chewy, because they had soaked up the sauce. Leslie Tay noticed it in 2009, describing a pastry that was not overly flaky but light and buttery, with a chewy inner layer that had absorbed the filling (ieatishootipost, 2009). Miss Tam Chiak’s tasters found the same thing ten years later: gravy soaked into the inner layers (Miss Tam Chiak, 2019).

That contrast, crackle then give, is what I chase in every recreation attempt. It is also the reason I think “not over-flaky” is a compliment. A pastry that is all flake and no chew would have shattered into your lap and told you nothing about the filling.

What was in the filling?

The filling was a creamy chicken mixture bound with a homemade bechamel, the French white sauce of butter, flour and milk (ieatishootipost, 2013). Here is what each source recorded:

A few details deserve a closer look.

The chicken was thigh, not breast. Leslie Tay described the meat being cooked slowly until its fibres just start to come apart, before the sauce goes in (ieatishootipost, 2013). Thigh stays moist through a second cooking in the oven, which breast rarely does.

The potato is where memories diverge. SETHLUI.com describes chunks (SETHLUI.com, 2020). A 2017 Burpple reviewer remembered a mashed and smashed potato filling (Burpple). Both can be true. Potato cubes simmered in a thick sauce soften at the edges and break down a little more every time the pie is reheated. In my recreations I dice it small and let some of it collapse.

Corn is a maybe. Two Burpple reviewers mention sweet corn, in 2014 and 2017. Leslie Tay and Miss Tam Chiak do not. Recipes change over thirteen years, and memories blur, so this site says “some remember corn” and leaves it out of the flagship recipe while suggesting it as an option.

It leaned a little sweet. Two reviewers describe the filling as a little sweet, one of them alongside the white pepper (Burpple). Sweet peas, onion cooked gently, carrot and corn (if it was there) would all push it that way.

There was no egg. No reviewer mentions one, and that absence matters, because half a hard-boiled egg is the calling card of many old-school Singapore chicken pies. There is a good explainer on why so many Singapore chicken pies carry half an egg; the Oven Marvel pie simply did without, one more way it differed from the domed bakery kind. In its place was the peppery bechamel that the guide to white pepper in chicken pie tries to explain.

How peppery was it?

Peppery enough that nearly every review mentions it, and pleasant enough that nobody complains. The heat was the warm, back-of-the-throat kind that white pepper gives, rather than the sharp bite of black. A 2017 reviewer used exactly that phrase, white peppery (Burpple). Leslie Tay connected the pie’s character to a Hainanese touch, which he felt made it distinctly Singaporean (ieatishootipost, 2013). My own guess, labelled clearly as a guess, is that the pepper was doing the job a stock cube does in lesser pies: carrying the flavour through a rich, mild sauce. There is a whole page on white pepper.

Was it greasy?

It depends on whom you ask, and I think both camps were right. Leslie Tay was struck by how little oil pooled under the pie (ieatishootipost, 2013). A reader commenting on his post, who carried a pie back to the office, found the paper bag soaked through and felt the flat shape held too little filling. Miss Tam Chiak’s team also saw an oil-drenched bag (Miss Tam Chiak, 2019).

All-butter puff pastry does that. Warm butter migrates. A pie eaten at the counter leaves a few spots; a pie that travels fifteen minutes in a closed paper bag leaves a map. The grease-spotted bag became the most reported physical memory of Oven Marvel, which is why it is the motif of this whole site.

How big was it, and was it enough?

It was an individual pie, sized for one person as a snack. Opinions on value split along the usual lines. A 2018 Burpple reviewer wished the portion were bigger for the price (Burpple), while umakemehungry wrote that one was never enough (umakemehungry, 2016), which I take as the same complaint delivered as a compliment. At S$2.80 around 2009, rising to S$4 by 2018, it was never the cheapest pie in Singapore. The price page tracks every reported price.

How did it make people feel?

This is the part no source can prove, so I will keep it short. Leslie Tay said it reminded him of the neighbourhood bakery pies of his childhood, while admitting that he had never eaten one exactly like it, and he liked it best with a cup of teh tarik (ieatishootipost, 2013). The slowchomp reviewer compared it to something a grandmother might make, a taste that made them think of “the good olden days” (slowchomp, 2015).

Could you reheat it?

Yes, and the shop said so. In 2016 the staff advised refrigerating leftovers and letting them stand for 10 to 15 minutes before reheating (umakemehungry, 2016). A 2017 reviewer said it reheated well in a toaster oven (Burpple). My full method for any puff pastry pie, with food-safe temperatures, is on reheating puff pastry pies without sogginess.

Can you still buy it?

No. Oven Marvel closed in early 2022, and its recipe was never published. If you want something to eat this week, I have put together chicken pies you can buy in Singapore today, with an honest note on how each one differs. If you want the closest thing to the real memory, you will have to bake it, and the flagship recreation recipe is where I would start.