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Scalloped Chicken

Scalloped Chicken is a baked dish of sliced chicken coated with Allemande sauce, breadcrumbs, cheese, spices, and butter, served with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Cut the cold cooked chicken into thin slices.

  2. Moisten the chicken with Allemande sauce.

  3. Fill scallop shells or oval deep dishes with the chicken.

Top and bake

  1. Sprinkle with a mixture of fresh bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, red pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Drizzle with melted butter.

  3. Arrange on a baking sheet and heat until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve in the shell or dish, garnished with watercress.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked chicken meat
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it substance and bulk.
Allemade sauce
Moistens the chicken so it stays tender and cohesive under heat.
Fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that absorbs butter and browns when heated.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the topping brown well.
Melted butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavor in the crumb topping.

The step that matters

Heat until browned. Too little heat leaves the crumb topping pale and dry, while too much can scorch it before the chicken is heated through. Browning depends on sugars and proteins reacting at high surface temperature, so the topping needs an oven hot enough to brown but controlled enough to avoid burning.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, sauce, bread, parmesan cheese, pepper, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, sauce, bread, parmesan cheese, pepper, butter. 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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