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Chicken Loaf

A loaf made from cooked chicken mixed with jellied broth, bread crumbs, eggs, and spices, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Loaf

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. Boil the chicken until it easily comes off the bones, reducing the broth until little remains.

  2. Chop the chicken once cooled and mix in the jellied broth.

Form and bake

  1. Add the bread crumbs, raw eggs, pepper, salt, and mace; mix well to form a loaf.

  2. Glaze the top with egg white and cover with additional bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

Serve

  1. Slice and serve cold.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Cooked chicken
Provides the main body and protein of the loaf.
Jellied broth
Adds moisture and binds the chopped chicken together as it cools.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the loaf a firm, sliceable structure.
Raw eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to hold the loaf together.
Egg white
Glazing the top helps it brown and form a shiny crust.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking at 400°F browns the glazed egg white and crumb crust; underbaking leaves the raw eggs unset, so the loaf may crumble when sliced.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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