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Minced Chicken

A savory sauce made from diced chicken, butter, flour, stock, egg yolk, lemon rind, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Minced Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the chicken filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and add the stock.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Add the chicken, lemon rind, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, then heat thoroughly.

  5. Stir in the egg yolk and mix well.

Prepare and bake the bacon

  1. If using bacon, roll thin strips.

  2. Skewer the bacon strips.

  3. Bake the bacon in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until crisp.

  4. Serve the bacon around the dish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it substance and bulk.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that holds the chicken together.
Egg yolk
Stirred in at the end to enrich and slightly thicken the mixture.
Stock or milk
Provides the liquid that forms the sauce and keeps the chicken moist.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so adding it to a very hot mixture can scramble it. Remove the pan from strong heat first and stir steadily so the sauce becomes smooth and creamy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, milk, egg, lemon, 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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