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Chicken and Oyster Pates

A creamy sauce of milk, butter, and flour with oysters, cayenne, and chopped chicken, served as pates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 and Oyster Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine cream or milk, flour, butter, onion, parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Finish and fill

  1. Once the sauce thickens, add the oysters and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Stir in the chopped chicken and mix well.

  3. Fill the pates with the mixture.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds moisture and richness.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture in the filling.
Boiled chicken breast
Adds bulk and protein-rich body to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the oysters for 5 minutes after the sauce thickens. Oysters cook quickly and turn firm and rubbery if overcooked, while the sauce needs to be fully thickened first so the flour has set and the mixture holds together when filled.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, oyster, pepper, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, oyster, pepper, cream, butter, flour. 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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