Name: Vehy Nice Scallops From Cold Chicken
Ingredients: cold chicken meat; ½ cup cream; nutmeg; pepper; coarse sea salt; bread crumbs; butter

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 ↓

Vehy Nice Scallops From Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Bone the cold chicken meat and mince it small.
Heat the minced chicken in a little cream and season with nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Assemble and bake

Place the mixture into scallop shells.
Fill with bread crumbs and top with small bits of butter.
Brown the scallops in the oven.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken meat: Forms the main body of the filling.
Cream: Keeps the minced chicken moist and gives the filling a softer texture.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, golden topping when browned.
Butter: Adds fat that helps the topping brown and gives richness.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Garlicfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Nutmegthe original
Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, cream, pepper, bread, 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.