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Cream Chicken Forcemeat

A forcemeat made from chicken or turkey breast and wings, blended with egg white, cream, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream Chicken Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove skin and fat from the chicken or turkey breast and wings.

  2. Scrape the meat to remove sinews and place it in a mortar.

  3. Pound the meat to a paste, gradually adding the egg white to moisten it.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve a little at a time.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Season the pulp in a bowl with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Set the bowl on cracked ice and slowly stir in the thick cream until consistent.

Test and adjust

  1. Test the mixture by poaching a half teaspoonful in hot water for 10 minutes.

  2. Adjust thickness by adding more cream if too thick, or beaten egg white if too thin.

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 + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Chicken or turkey breast
Provides the main meat body that sets into a firm, sliceable paste.
Egg white
Binds the pounded meat and moistens it for a cohesive texture.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and fat for a smooth, tender texture.
White meat from wings
Adds more lean protein to build the paste's body and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream on ice. Keeping the mixture very cold while slowly adding cream helps the fat stay emulsified, so the forcemeat stays smooth instead of breaking or turning grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, egg, pepper, cream. 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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