Name: Minced Chicken and Poached Eggs
Ingredients: meat of a roast or boiled chicken; ½ cup Bechamel sauce; poached eggs; glazed tongue or ham; fried crouton of bread; white sauce

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Minced Chicken and Poached Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Cut the chicken into mince or shreds.
Place the chicken in a small stew pan with the Bechamel sauce and warm it.

Plate and serve

Dish the mince and arrange the poached eggs around it.
Add a scallop of glazed tongue or ham and a fried crouton of bread between the eggs.
Pour a little white sauce around the entree 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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of a roast or boiled chicken: Forms the base of the dish, providing the main savoury filling.
Bechamel sauce: Adds moisture and creaminess, binding the minced chicken together as it warms.
Poached eggs: Add soft, runny yolk that enriches the dish when broken into the sauce.
Glazed tongue or ham: Contributes salty, savoury flavour and a contrasting firmer texture.
White sauce: Adds moisture and a smooth, rich finish around the entree.

“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.