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Farce a Quenelles De Volaille

A French chicken quenelle made with ground chicken, veal trimmings, bread dough, egg yolks, béchamel, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Farce a Quenelles De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the skin and tendons from the chickens.

  2. Finely grind the meat.

  3. Add half the volume of chopped veal and half the volume of panade to the ground chicken.

  4. Grind the mixture for five minutes.

  5. Add the chicken meat and grind for another 15 minutes.

Season and bind

  1. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg yolks.

  2. Grind for another 10 minutes.

  3. Incorporate the cold béchamel sauce and grind until well mixed.

Sieve, chill and test

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a terrine.

  2. Chill the terrine in a water bath or on crushed ice.

  3. Test the mixture by cooking a small quenelle in simmering broth; it should cook without boiling.

  4. If the quenelle is not delicate enough, mix in a bit more béchamel.

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

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

  2. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main structure and body of the quenelle once ground and cooked.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set gently when cooked.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and tenderness so the quenelle stays delicate rather than dense.
Veal trimmings
Adds savory flavor and body to the chicken forcemeat.
Bread dough (panade)
Absorbs moisture and helps keep the forcemeat light and tender.

The step that matters

Testing the mixture before shaping. Cooking a small test quenelle in simmering broth checks texture. If the mixture boils or turns tough, it is too firm or overworked, and extra cold béchamel is needed to keep the quenelles delicate.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, bread, egg, pepper, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, bread, egg, pepper, sauce. 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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