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Chicken Pates

A chicken pâté made with milk, flour, spices, truffle, and served in puff pastry shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Pates

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the white meat from the cooked chicken and cut it into small dice.

  2. Keep the diced chicken cool to prevent drying.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the milk and flour until smooth.

  2. Add red pepper, salt, nutmeg, mace, onion, parsley, and butter to the mixture.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolk.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with cream.

  6. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the chopped truffle with the diced chicken.

  2. Combine the truffle‑chicken mixture with the sauce in a saucepan.

  3. Heat until very hot.

  4. Pour the chicken and sauce mixture into puff pastry shells.

  5. Top each shell with a thin slice of truffle.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the bulk and meaty texture of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and helps it set and thicken when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Truffle
Contributes a strong, earthy aroma to the filling and topping.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce after adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat but can curdle or scramble if it boils, so the sauce should be thickened carefully and not allowed to overheat. Straining afterward removes any lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, flour, pepper, nutmeg, onion, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, flour, pepper, nutmeg, onion, parsley. 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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