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Chicken Foecemeat

A chilled chicken forcemeat made with bread, milk, egg yolks, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Foecemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop raw chicken breasts into pieces and pound them in a mortar.

  2. Soak the same quantity of bread in milk and add it to the chicken.

  3. Add the yolks of 3-4 eggs, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and 1 teaspoon of nutmeg. Mix well and strain through a sieve.

  4. Refrigerate and use as needed.

  5. For chicken cream forcemeat, add 6 teaspoons of cream.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Chicken + milktop 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

Raw chicken breasts
Provide the protein that, when pounded and strained, forms the body of the forcemeat.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and a tender texture to the forcemeat.
Egg yolks
Add fat and emulsifying power that bind the forcemeat and help it set smoothly.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture for a smoother, softer chicken cream forcemeat.

The step that matters

Pounding and straining the chicken. Chopping and pounding break down the chicken fibres, and straining removes remaining sinew and lumps. Together these create a smooth, even texture that binds well and does not turn grainy or rubbery when cooked.

“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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