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Scalloped Chicken

Scalloped Chicken is a baked dish of boiled chicken, potatoes, and bread crumbs topped with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Scalloped Chicken

Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scalloped 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.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Divide the chicken into joints and boil until the meat easily separates from the bone.

  2. Remove the bones and chop the meat into small pieces.

  3. Thicken the boiling water with flour and season with butter and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a deep dish, layer bread crumbs, chicken, and slices of cooked potatoes, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

  2. Pour the gravy over the layers and add a few bits of butter.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until nicely browned.

  4. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a gravy that moistens the layers.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the gravy and the top of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form the layers and brown on top during baking.
Cooked potatoes
Add body and starch that soak up the gravy and hold the layers together.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, cooked tender and then chopped into pieces.

The step that matters

Thicken the boiling water with flour. Flour must be stirred into boiling liquid so starch gelatinises evenly; added to a still or cooling liquid it clumps and leaves the gravy lumpy and thin.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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