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Escalloped Chicken

Layered chicken with bread crumbs and mashed potatoes, baked with milk and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Escalloped 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

  1. Remove the meat from the cooked chicken.

  2. Layer the chicken meat alternately with bread crumbs and mashed potatoes in a dish.

  3. Pour hot milk over the layers, adding more if necessary.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, paprika, and Worcestershire sauce.

Bake

  1. Cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours using both hot stones.

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. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and the bulk of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and help hold the layers together as they bake.
Mashed potatoes
Add body and moisture, giving a softer, creamier texture between the layers.
Hot milk
Moistens the layers and, as it heats, helps the dish set into a creamy bake.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk over the layers. Enough liquid must soak through the crumbs and potatoes so the dish bakes moist rather than dry. Adding more if needed keeps the layers saturated while the starches in the bread and potatoes absorb the liquid and set during baking.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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