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Poulet a LA Reine

A French dish of boiled chicken served with a creamy sauce and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Rub the fowl with the split onion.

  2. Place the fowl in a well-greased bag and add the stock.

  3. Add the tied herbs and spring onions.

Cook the fowl

  1. Mix in the cooked rice.

  2. Simmer very slowly in a moderate oven (300 °F) until the fowl is cooked.

  3. Remove the fowl and herbs, and transfer the rice to a fresh bag.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add stock, cream, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to the rice; mix thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolk and heat again 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle simmering.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the rice mixture.
Egg yolk
Thickens the mixture and gives it body when gently heated.
Cooked rice
Forms the base of the mixture, adding body and bulk to the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolk and heat again before serving. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot, so reheat gently and avoid boiling the mixture.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, rice, cream, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, egg):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, rice, cream, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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