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Minced Fowls on Toast

A savory toast topped with minced fowl, cream, butter, flour, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Minced Fowls on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the fowls and clean it from the skin.

  2. Boil the bones and skin with 3/4 cup of water until reduced by half.

  3. Strain the gravy and let it cool, then skim off the fat.

Make the creamed fowl

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the gravy, 1/2 cup of cream, 3 tablespoons of butter, and 1 tablespoon of flour. Stir until it boils.

  2. Add the finely minced fowl, chopped hard-boiled eggs, salt, and pepper. Stir over heat until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over hot toast.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Flour
Thickens the cream and gravy into a smooth sauce as it heats and boils.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a silky, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce feel smooth and mellow.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture that thickens the minced mixture slightly.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy with cream, butter and flour. Flour must be fully mixed in and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce; stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the pan base.

“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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