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Scalloped Chicken

A dish of minced chicken and ham mixed with cream, bread crumbs, and butter, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Scalloped Chicken

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold chicken and lean ham finely.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt if needed.

  3. Stir in enough sweet cream to make the mixture moist.

Assemble and brown

  1. Cover the mixture with bread crumbs.

  2. Transfer to a scallop shell or flat dish.

  3. Pour a little melted butter on top.

  4. Brown under a broiler or in front of a range.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cream
Adds moisture so the minced chicken and ham stay tender rather than dry.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on top that browns when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the crumb topping brown.
Cold chicken
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Brown under a broiler or in front of a range. Browning depends on surface heat reaching the crumbs and butter. Too little heat leaves the top pale and soft, while too much can scorch the crumbs before the dish is heated through.

“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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