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Chicken Toast

A pastry made with chopped chicken, onion, butter, cream, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Toast

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 filling

  1. Chop the cold chicken finely and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and minced onion.

  3. Add butter, cream, and enough water to cover the chicken; simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and baking powder; add butter and enough cold water to form a dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into circles.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the chicken mixture on half of the circles, leaving space at the edges.

  2. Moisten the edges with water, fold over, and press to seal.

  3. Spread soft butter on top and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden and puffed.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Chicken
Provides the savory filling that the dough encloses.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the filling and bakes into a crust.
Baking powder
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and puff in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crust brown and turn golden.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the chicken filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not moistened and pressed firmly, the filling can leak out during baking and the pastry may open. Moistening helps the dough stick to itself, creating a sealed pocket that holds the filling as it cooks.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, cream, flour. 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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