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Salpicon Op Chicken with Potatoes

A dish of diced chicken, tongue, ham, truffles, and mushrooms in béchamel sauce served over a border of mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Salpicon Op Chicken with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold chicken, tongue, ham, truffles, and mushrooms into small dice.

  2. Heat the diced mixture in a rich béchamel sauce, just enough to moisten it.

Assemble and bake

  1. On a round or oval dish, arrange a border of mashed potatoes using a piping bag.

  2. Brush the potato border with egg yolk and bake until golden.

Serve

  1. Place the salpicon in the center of the dish, sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

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

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

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  5. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the main meaty body of the filling, giving it substance and chew.
Rich béchamel sauce
Binds the diced meats and mushrooms together and keeps the filling moist.
Mashed potatoes
Form the piped border that holds the filling and gives a soft, creamy contrast.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the potato border so it browns richly in the oven.

The step that matters

Heating the diced mixture in the béchamel. Heat only enough to warm and moisten the meats. Overheating or boiling the sauce can make it thicken unevenly, break, or toughen the cut meats, so the filling loses its smooth, moist texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, truffle, mushroom, sauce, potato, egg):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, truffle, mushroom, sauce, potato, 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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