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Chicken Cannelons

A puff pastry filled with minced chicken, flour, butter, egg yolk, cream, pepper, and salt, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Cannelons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine minced fowl, flour, butter, beaten egg yolk, cream, pepper, and salt to form a thick paste.

Fill the pastry

  1. Roll out puff pastry very thin and cut into squares.

  2. Place a spoonful of the mixture in the center of each square and fold over.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry or bake the filled pastries at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned.

  2. Serve piled on a dish and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cooked fowl
Provides the main savoury filling and bulk of the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together as a paste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling and adds richness and body.
Cream
Keeps the filling moist and softens its texture.
Puff pastry
Forms a thin, flaky shell that browns during cooking.

The step that matters

Roll out the puff pastry very thin. Thin pastry cooks through and browns evenly around the filling. Thick dough stays doughy in the centre and can burst or cook unevenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, cream, pepper. 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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