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Chicken Loaf

A boned chicken stuffed with seasoned sweetbread, tied with bacon, boiled in wine, stock, and herbs, served with rich sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,904 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Chicken Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the chicken carefully.

  2. Fill the chicken with chopped sweetbread, well seasoned.

  3. Shape the chicken back into its original form and tie it up with bacon.

  4. Wrap the chicken in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the chicken in a mixture of white wine, good stock, and sweet herbs.

  2. Once cooked, untie the chicken and use the bacon as a garnish.

  3. Cut the chicken into narrow strips and serve with a rich sauce.

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. Chicken + white winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,904 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. White wine + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Forms the outer shell that holds the stuffing and is sliced for serving.
Sweetbread
Supplies a soft, rich filling that contrasts with the firmer chicken meat.
Bacon
Wraps the bird during cooking, adding savoury fat and flavour, then serves as a garnish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the poaching liquid, lightly flavouring the chicken.
Good stock
Provides the main cooking liquid, moistening the meat and adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Boil the chicken in the wine, stock and herb mixture. Gentle, steady simmering cooks the stuffed bird through without toughening the meat. A hard, rapid boil can make the outer meat tough and dry while the filling is still setting.

“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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