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Chaud-froid De Volaille

A chilled chicken dish made with boiled fowl, spices, and optional mayonnaise, served in layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chaud-froid De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fowl

  1. Boil the fowl in enough water to cover it, adding garlic, cloves, allspice, salt, and bay leaf.

  2. Cook until the meat is ready to fall from the bones.

  3. Remove the meat and chop it finely.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Layer the mold

  1. Rinse a smooth mold with cold water.

  2. Layer the bottom with slices of cold hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Layer with chopped chicken, repeating until the mold is filled.

  4. Boil down the chicken broth to about 1½ cups, then strain.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and cayenne if needed.

  6. Pour the broth over the chicken layers.

  7. Refrigerate for several hours until firm.

Make the mayonnaise layer and serve

  1. Turn out.

  2. Serve with salad.

  3. Let the broth cool.

  4. Mix with an equal amount of rich Mayonnaise Sauce.

  5. Fill the mold with this mixture and chicken.

  6. Set aside to harden.

  7. Turn out.

  8. Serve with salad.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the cooked meat and rich broth that set the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, pale slices that give structure and contrast to the chopped chicken.
Chicken broth (in the method)
Reduced and gelled, it binds the chicken layers together when chilled.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil down the chicken broth to about 1½ cups. Reducing concentrates the gelatin from the bones, so the broth sets firm when chilled. Too little reduction leaves it weak; too much makes it overly salty and stiff.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, egg, sauce):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, egg, sauce. 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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