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Escalloped Chicken

Escalloped chicken is a baked dish of finely chopped chicken mixed with breadcrumbs, seasonings, and a creamy egg‑milk coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Escalloped Chicken

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Escalloped Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop the remains of cold chicken finely.

Assemble

  1. Mix the chicken with an equal amount of bread crumbs, and season with salt, pepper, and sage.

  2. Place the mixture in a baking dish.

  3. Pour over some chicken gravy and a little melted butter.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk until thick enough to spread.

  5. Spread this mixture over the chicken and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meaty filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the gravy and butter, giving the mixture body and structure.
Chicken gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour that keeps the chicken from drying out.
Egg
Thickens the milk mixture and helps it set into a spreadable, custard-like topping.
Milk
Combines with the egg to form a thick, creamy layer that softens as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Beating the egg into the milk until thick enough to spread. If the egg and milk are too thin, the topping runs into the chicken instead of forming a layer. Beaten egg thickens as its proteins set during baking, so the mixture should be spreadable before it goes in the oven.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

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