Name: Chicken Ramakins
Ingredients: 3 oz cooked chicken or sweetbread; 1 oz cooked ham; 1 oz butter

Why it works: Chicken and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Chicken Ramakins

Ingredients

3 oz cooked chicken or sweetbread
1 oz cooked ham
1 oz butter

Directions

Prepare and cook

Chop the cooked chicken or sweetbread and ham finely.
In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the chopped chicken and ham to the pan. Sauté until heated through.

Serve

Serve warm in ramekins.

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.

Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken or sweetbread: Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
Cooked ham: Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavour while the filling heats.

“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.