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Minced Fowls on Toast

Shredded fowl mixed with a cream and butter gravy, served over hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Minced Fowls on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Remove all meat from the bones of the fowl and keep it covered.

  2. Boil the bones and skin in 3 cups of water until reduced by half.

  3. Strain the gravy and let it cool.

Make the mince

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the fat from the gravy, ½ cup of cream, 3 tablespoons of butter, and 1 tablespoon of flour. Stir until boiling.

  2. Add the minced fowl and chopped hard-boiled eggs. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat the mixture until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve the mince over hot toast.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fowl meat
Provides the main body of the mince, shredded so it blends into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping carry flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and fat into a smooth, binding sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, creamy texture to the mince.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream sauce until boiling. Flour must be cooked with the fat and liquid until the mixture boils to thicken fully and lose its raw floury taste. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce that may taste pasty.

“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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