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Chicken in Ramekins

Baked chicken pieces in a creamy mushroom sauce served in ramekins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken in Ramekins

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

  1. Steam the chicken until cooked, then let it cool and cut into dice.

  2. In a bowl, blend the butter and flour, then add the cream and mushrooms.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in the diced chicken, season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered ramekins and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  2. Garnish with lemon and 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.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 protein and bulk of the filling.
Egg yolks
Set the mixture into a custard-like texture and add richness when baked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft after baking.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream base so the filling holds together.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking until light brown. Egg yolks set with heat, so overbaking can make the filling dry, grainy, or rubbery. Pull the ramekins once the top is light brown and the centre has just firmed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

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