Name: Minced Fowls on Toast
Ingredients: meat from cold roast or boiled fowls; 3/4 pint water; 1/2 cup cream; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon flour; 3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; salt to taste; pepper to taste; toast

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

Remove the meat from the bones of the fowls and clean it from the skin.
Keep it covered until ready to use.
Boil the bones and skin with 3/4 pint of water until reduced by half.
Strain the gravy and let it cool.
Skim off the fat from the gravy and place it in a clean saucepan with 1/2 cup of cream and 3 tablespoons of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour.
Stir until it boils.

Finish and serve

Add the finely minced fowl and chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Season with salt and pepper.
Heat the mixture over the fire until ready to serve.
Dish it over hot toast and serve.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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: Forms the body of the dish, providing the savoury bulk that the sauce coats.
Butter and flour: Flour thickens the cream gravy into a smooth sauce, while butter adds richness and flavour.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the gravy.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and a soft, rich texture to the minced mixture.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils. Flour needs to be heated fully in the butter and liquid to cook out its raw taste and to thicken the sauce properly. Stopping early leaves a pasty, floury gravy.

“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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Minced Fowls on Toast