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Scalloped Chicken

Baked chicken pieces in a butter‑flour‑egg broth topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Scalloped Chicken

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scalloped Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean, wash, and cut the fowl into pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a pot with 4 quarts of cold water and cook slowly until tender.

  3. Remove the chicken.

  4. Season the broth with salt and pepper.

  5. Reserve the broth for soup.

  6. Let the chicken cool.

  7. Cut the chicken into pieces about 1 inch long and ¼ inch wide.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the reserved broth in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the broth with 1 tablespoon of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Stir in the chicken.

  4. Just before boiling, remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Beat in the whisked eggs and minced parsley.

Bake and serve

  1. Strew the bottom of a bake dish with bread crumbs.

  2. Pour the chicken mixture into the bake dish.

  3. Cover the mixture with more bread crumbs.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  5. Bake covered until bubbling hot.

  6. Uncover and brown delicately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Fowl
Provides the main cooked meat that forms the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth sauce that holds the chicken together.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the chicken and broth into a sliceable custard-like filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown delicately in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden layer on the top and bottom of the dish.

The step that matters

Remove the mixture from heat before boiling. Eggs added to a very hot mixture can scramble and turn grainy. Taking it off the heat just before boiling lets the eggs thicken it gently and smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, egg, bread. 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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