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Chicken Ramakins

A baked dish of minced chicken, spinach, cheese, eggs, and seasonings in small paper or china cases.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Ramakins

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. Chop the hard-boiled egg.

  2. Rub the spinach through a sieve or chop finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, mix the chicken, chopped egg, spinach, parsley, and cheese.

  2. Add a little pepper and coarse sea salt, then moisten with stock and stir until hot.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the raw yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter small paper or china ramakin cases and fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 10 minutes.

  3. Garnish with parsley and serve.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of the filling, giving it substance and savoury flavour.
Raw egg yolks
Stirred in off the heat to enrich the filling and help bind it as it sets.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds texture and body to the filling, blending with the chicken.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury richness and flavour to the filling.
Spinach
Adds moisture, colour and a mild earthy flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the raw yolks. Yolks must be added off the heat, after the mixture is hot but not boiling. Too much heat can scramble the yolks, making the filling grainy and less smooth, and it can also cause the mixture to curdle.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cheese, egg, parsley, lemon, pepper, butter. 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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