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Chicken Scallop

Chicken Scallop is 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. Mix the chicken with the boiling oyster liquor in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the hot milk thickened with butter and flour.

  4. Remove the pot from heat.

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

Bake and brown

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

  2. Pour the chicken mixture into the dish.

  3. Cover the dish with another layer of breadcrumbs, seasoned and topped with bits of butter.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

  5. Uncover the dish 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
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its main body and savory flavor.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the hot milk into a smooth sauce that binds the chicken together.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their rich, crumbly texture enriches the sauce and helps it set creamy when baked.
Breadcrumbs
Form crisp layers on top and bottom that brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot milk until smooth and thickened; lumps or a thin sauce will leave the filling watery or uneven once baked.

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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