Name: Minced Fowls on Toast
Ingredients: Cold roast or boiled fowl meat, shredded; 3 cups water; ½ cup cream; 3 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour; 3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Bread, toasted

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Minced Fowls on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

Remove all meat from the bones of the cold fowl and cover it to keep it fresh.
Boil the bones and skin in 3 cups of water until reduced by half.
Strain the gravy and let it cool, then skim off the fat.

Make the creamed mixture

In a clean saucepan, combine the gravy with ½ cup of cream and 3 tablespoons of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour.
Stir the mixture until it boils, then add the minced fowl and chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Season with salt and pepper, and heat until ready to serve.

Serve

Serve the mixture over hot toast.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Cold roast or boiled fowl meat: Provides the main minced protein that forms the body of the dish.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the gravy.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour, and with flour forms the base that thickens the sauce.
All-purpose flour: Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add soft texture and a mild richness that blends into the creamed mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until it boils. Flour thickens liquid only once it is heated to a boil, and stirring keeps it from lumping. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin or floury-tasting.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

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Minced Fowls on Toast