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Chicken Patties, or Bouchees a LA Keine

Chicken patties made with diced cooked chicken, rich cream sauce, spices, lemon, and butter, served in vol-au-vent cases.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Patties, or Bouchees a LA Keine

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from boiled chickens and cut it into small dice.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chicken with white pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, lemon juice, salt, and butter.

  3. Pour the cream sauce over the chicken and let it simmer gently until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Fill the patty cases with the chicken mixture 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
Rich cream sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy texture that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and chicken flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until serving. Cream sauces can separate, scorch or turn grainy if boiled hard. A gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the chicken tender while it waits to be served.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, sauce, nutmeg, lemon, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, nutmeg, lemon, butter. 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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