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Chicken Quenelles

Chicken quenelles are small olive-shaped pieces made from bread and chicken, seasoned with salt and cayenne, bound with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the soft bread and chopped chicken together.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add enough raw egg yolk to bind the mixture.

Shape and cook

  1. Mould the mixture into small olive-shaped pieces using two spoons.

  2. Optionally, roll the quenelles in egg and cracker dust, then fry them.

  3. Alternatively, poach the quenelles in boiling broth or water until they float.

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

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

  2. Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft bread
Adds bulk and softness, helping the quenelles stay light rather than dense.
Chicken
Provides the main protein body and flavour of the quenelles.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mixture so the quenelles hold their shape during cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Too little yolk leaves the mixture crumbly and it falls apart when shaped or cooked; the yolk's proteins set during cooking and hold the pieces together. Add it gradually until the mixture just holds together.

“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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