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Scalloped Chicken or Turkey

A baked dish of shredded chicken or turkey layered with rice or macaroni, covered in poulette or tomato sauce, topped with buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Scalloped Chicken or Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the cold chicken or turkey and boiled rice or macaroni.

  2. Cover the layers with poulette or tomato sauce.

  3. Top with buttered crumbs.

  4. Bake until the crumbs are a rich 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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken or turkey
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Boiled rice or macaroni
Adds starch that soaks up sauce and gives the dish body.
Poulette or tomato sauce
Supplies moisture and seasoning that keep the layers from drying out in the oven.
Buttered crumbs
Browns in the oven under the sauce, adding a crisp golden top.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice. 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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