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Petits Choux a LA Reine

Petits Choux à la Reine are small choux pastry balls filled with chicken and ham, topped with aspic jelly and garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Petits Choux a LA Reine

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux balls

  1. Make the choux pastry into very small round balls.

  2. Bake the balls in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C).

  3. Brush the balls with egg white.

  4. Return the balls to the oven for five minutes.

  5. Let the balls cool.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the chicken and ham.

  2. Stir the minced chicken and ham into the stiff white sauce.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper and a little salt.

  4. Add the mayonnaise once the mixture is cold.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the choux balls with the mixture.

  2. Decorate the tops with finely chopped yellow and red aspic jelly.

  3. Dish up the choux balls.

  4. Garnish with watercress.

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 + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Sauce + watercresstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + watercresstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Choux pastry
Forms the hollow, crisp shells that hold the filling.
Cooked chicken or veal
Provides the main meaty body and texture of the filling.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture to bind the minced meat into a creamy filling.
Cooked ham
Adds savoury flavour and a firmer texture to the filling.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a glossy, clear topping that decorates and seals the surface.

The step that matters

Return the balls to the oven for five minutes. A short extra bake after the egg white glaze dries and firms the shell, so it stays crisp and hollow when filled rather than going soft and damp.

“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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