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Chicken Scallop

A baked chicken dish with oyster liquor, milk, butter, flour, almonds or mushrooms, egg yolks, and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Scallop

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, mix the chicken with the boiling oyster liquor and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the hot milk thickened with butter and flour, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the chopped almonds or mushrooms and the pounded egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with a thick layer of seasoned breadcrumbs.

  2. Pour the chicken mixture into the dish and cover with another layer of breadcrumbs, seasoned and dotted with butter.

  3. Cook covered for 30 minutes, then uncover and brown lightly.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

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

Chicken
Provides the main body and substance of the filling.
Butter and flour
Thicken the hot milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that holds the filling together.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add a rich, creamy texture to the filling.
Breadcrumbs
Form the layers that soak up moisture and brown lightly on top.

The step that matters

Thickening the hot milk with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and milk to avoid lumps and a raw starchy taste; the sauce thickens as starch granules swell with heat, so it should be stirred until smooth and properly thickened before the filling is combined.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, oyster, milk, butter, flour, 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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