Name: Minced Chicken
Ingredients: cold chicken; seasoning (to taste); wetting (such as broth or water); 1 egg

Why it works: Chicken and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,991 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Minced Chicken

Ingredients

cold chicken
seasoning (to taste)
wetting (such as broth or water)
1 egg

Directions

Prepare

Chop the cold chicken into small pieces.
Season the chicken to taste.
Add a little broth or water to moisten the mixture.

Cook and serve

Place the mixture in a saucepan and heat it over medium heat.
Make a hole in the center of the mixture and crack an egg into it.
Serve immediately.

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.

Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,991 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken: Forms the main body of the dish and provides the protein that sets as it heats.
Egg: Binds the chicken and sets as it cooks, giving a softer, cohesive texture.
Broth or water: Adds moisture so the minced chicken stays tender rather than dry while heating.

“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.