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Escaloped Chicken

Chicken baked with butter, cream, crackers, lemon juice, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Escaloped Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Salt the chicken.

  2. Boil the chicken until very tender.

  3. Remove the chicken from the bone and chop the meat.

Assemble the dish

  1. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Add a layer of chopped chicken to the dish.

  3. Add bits of butter.

  4. Moisten with cream.

  5. Layer more chicken.

  6. Add a few drops of lemon juice.

  7. Add crackers.

  8. Add chicken again.

  9. Top with crackers.

  10. Top with butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; boiling until very tender makes the meat soft and easy to layer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the top during baking.
Sweet cream
Moistens the layers so the dish stays tender rather than dry.
Crackers
Add structure and a crisp, toasted top layer when baked.

The step that matters

Moisten with cream. The chicken is already cooked and lean, so without enough cream between layers it can bake dry. The cream keeps the layers moist while the dish heats through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, cream, pepper, oyster):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, cream, pepper, oyster. 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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