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Chicken Forcemeat

A mixture of butter, stale bread crumbs, milk, cooked chicken, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the stale bread crumbs and milk, cooking for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cooked chicken and beaten eggs.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the forcemeat once sieved finely.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on gentle heat, giving the forcemeat its firm, cohesive texture.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body, helping the forcemeat hold together and stay tender.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mixture stays soft and smooth rather than dry.

The step that matters

Cooking the bread crumbs and milk. Cooking the crumbs in milk swells them into a thick paste that thickens the mixture. If it is not cooked enough, the forcemeat stays loose and may be watery; if overcooked, the starch tightens and the texture turns stiff and gluey.

“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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