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Deviled Chicken

Deviled Chicken is a baked dish of sweet milk, toasted bread, chicken, celery, eggs, salt, pepper, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a baking dish, combine sweet milk and toasted bread.

  3. Place the dish over heat until the toast is soft.

Mix and bake

  1. Add chopped chicken, celery, beaten eggs, salt, pepper, and paprika; stir lightly until well mixed.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes until light 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when baked, binding the mixture into a soft, sliceable custard-like body.
Sweet milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture that the eggs set into a tender texture.
Toasted bread
Absorbs the milk and forms the soft, starchy base that gives the dish its body.
Chicken
Supplies the main protein and bulk, and sets into the baked mixture.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and toast. Milk scorches and can boil over on direct heat, so the dish should be heated gently only until the toast softens, not left to simmer.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, chicken, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, chicken, egg, pepper. 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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