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Chaud-froid of Becasse

A chilled game bird served in a jelly made from port wine, mushroom ketchup, currant jelly, anchovy essence, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chaud-froid of Becasse

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the birds

  1. Cook the game birds, basting with butter.

  2. Use the remaining butter to make a sauce, adding port, mushroom ketchup, currant jelly, anchovy essence, and gelatine.

  3. Cut the birds into joints.

  4. Baste the joints three times with the sauce.

Set and dish

  1. Set the joints in jelly.

  2. Prepare mushroom, tomato, and brown jelly in pans.

  3. Cut the jelly into dice.

  4. Arrange the game around an entree dish.

  5. Pile the jelly in the center.

  6. Create a border with cress and diced celery.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Game birds
Provide the main cooked meat that the dish is built around.
Port wine
Adds depth and a sweet-tart flavour to the sauce.
Gelatine
Sets the sauce and jelly so they hold their shape when chilled.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the birds brown and stay moist while basting.

The step that matters

Baste the joints three times with the sauce. Repeated thin coats of sauce build a glossy, even layer that sets smoothly over the meat. Sauce that is too warm or too thick can run off or cloud the coating.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, tomato, celery):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, tomato, celery. 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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