Name: Farce a Gratix- -force-meat Cooked
Ingredients: 275g chopped onion; 2 shallots; 1 small sprig of thyme; 1 bay leaf; 1 pound chicken livers; salt; pepper

Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Farce a Gratix- -force-meat Cooked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a pan, sauté the chopped onion and shallots with thyme and bay leaf until soft.
Cut the chicken livers into ½-inch pieces and sauté until well done.
Season the livers with salt and pepper.

Finish

Pound the mixture in a mortar and rub it through a fine sieve.

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.

Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,476 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers: Provide the main body and rich flavor of the forcemeat once cooked and puréed.
Onion: Softened slowly to add sweetness and a savory base to the mixture.
Shallots: Add a mild, delicate sweetness that softens with the onion during sautéing.

The step that matters

Cooking the livers until well done. Livers that are undercooked may be grainy or unsafe, while overcooking makes them dry and chalky. Cook them until firm and no longer pink inside, then purée while still warm so the texture stays smooth when sieved.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, thyme, chicken, liver, pepper):

Potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, chicken, liver, pepper. 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.