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Chicken Pates

A savory chicken pâté mixed with milk, spices, truffle, and butter, served in puff pastry shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Pates

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the white meat from the cooked chicken and cut it into small dice. Keep it cool to prevent drying.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the milk with the flour, red pepper, salt, nutmeg, mace, onion, parsley, and butter.

  2. Bring to a boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolk to the sauce.

  4. If it becomes too thick, thin it with cream and strain through a fine sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the chopped truffle with the chicken and mix with the sauce.

  2. Heat everything together until very hot.

  3. Pour the mixture into puff pastry shells.

  4. Top each with a thin slice of truffle.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and texture of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce as it sets with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Truffle
Adds a strong earthy aroma to the filling and topping.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolk to the sauce. Egg yolk thickens by coagulating when heated, so it can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce is too hot when it is added. Adding it off the boil, while stirring, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, flour, pepper, nutmeg, onion, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, flour, pepper, nutmeg, onion, parsley. 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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