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Deviled Chicken

A baked chicken dish coated in mustard, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Deviled 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.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Dip the chicken pieces into melted butter.

  2. Dip the chicken pieces into a mixture of French mustard, English mustard, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place the chicken in a dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the chicken with fine bread crumbs.

  2. Dot the chicken with bits of butter.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve on a hot plate.

  5. Garnish with watercress seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

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. Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying the seasoned coating.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the coating stick to the chicken pieces.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping during baking.
French mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.
English mustard
Adds heat and pungency that deepens the spiced flavour.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and tang to the coating.

The step that matters

Covering the chicken with bread crumbs and baking. Bread crumbs need enough butter to brown evenly in the oven; without the dotted butter they can stay pale and dry, and the chicken can dry out if baked too long.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, sauce, pepper, bread, watercress, vinegar):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, sauce, pepper, bread, watercress, vinegar. 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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