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Minced Chicken

Fried balls of minced chicken mixed with breadcrumbs, egg, gravy, and seasonings, served with cress or parsley.

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

Minced Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine minced chicken, bread crumbs, beaten egg, gravy (or drawn butter), pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and rubbed egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Mix until just combined, being careful not to over-handle or make the mixture too wet.

  3. Shape the mixture into rolls or oval balls.

  4. Coat the shaped balls in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot dripping or the lard and butter mixture, frying a few at a time to avoid crowding.

  2. Once cooked, place them in a hot colander to drain excess fat.

  3. Serve in a heated dish with cress or parsley.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 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. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 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

Minced chicken
Forms the main body of the balls and gives them their savoury meat flavour.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, tender texture to the filling.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that helps the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Mixing the filling. Overworking the mixture or making it too wet can make the balls dense or cause them to fall apart in the hot fat, so mix only until combined.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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