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Scalloped Chicken

Scalloped Chicken is a baked dish of chicken, bread crumbs, and potatoes in a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Scalloped Chicken

Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scalloped Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the fowl joints until the meat easily separates from the bone.

  2. Remove the bones and chop the meat into small pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the boiling water with flour and season with butter and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a deep dish, layer bread crumbs, chicken, and slices of cooked potatoes, finishing with a layer of bread crumbs on top.

  2. Pour the gravy over the layers and add a few bits of butter.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until nicely browned.

  4. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Flour and butter 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

Fowl
Provides the cooked meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Flour
Starch thickens the boiling water into a gravy that binds the layers together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns during baking for flavor.
Bread crumbs
Form the top and bottom layers, which crisp and brown in the oven.
Cooked potatoes
Add starchy body and soft texture between the chicken layers.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be whisked into the simmering liquid so its starch dissolves evenly; added in clumps, it forms lumps that stay in the gravy and make it uneven in texture.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, bread, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, bread, parsley. 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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