Name: Minced Fowls on Toast
Ingredients: cold roast or boiled fowl meat; 3/4 cup water; 1/2 cup cream; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon flour; 3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; salt to taste; pepper to taste; hot toast

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Minced Fowls on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

Remove all the meat from the bones of the cold fowl and clean it from the skin. Keep covered until ready to use.
Boil the bones and skin with 3/4 cup of water until reduced by half. Strain the gravy and let it cool.

Make the sauce

Skim off the fat from the gravy and put it into a clean saucepan with 1/2 cup of cream, 3 tablespoons of butter, and 1 tablespoon of flour. Stir until it boils.
Add the finely minced fowl and chopped hard-boiled eggs. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat the mixture over the fire until ready to serve.

Serve

Dish the mixture over hot toast and serve.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Flour: Thickens the cream and butter mixture into a smooth sauce as it boils.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps give the sauce a smooth texture.
Cream: Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and a soft, rich texture to the minced filling.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until it boils. Flour needs to be stirred while it heats in the fat and liquid, and brought to a boil, so it cooks through and thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste.

“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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Minced Fowls on Toast