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Chicken Alb

A whole chicken with its breast rebuilt from minced chicken or veal and cream, baked and served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Alb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Parboil the chicken.

  2. Remove the breast and merrythought from the chicken.

  3. Mince the meat from the breast and merrythought.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the minced meat with the minced chicken or veal, adding salt and enough cream to make a smooth consistency.

  2. Melt the butter in a stew-pan.

  3. Add the minced mixture and ½ cup of cream to the stew-pan.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring carefully.

Bake and serve

  1. Lard the chicken.

  2. Place the chicken in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the minced meat to the chicken, shaping it into a round breast.

  4. Dust the chicken with flour.

  5. Return the chicken to the oven for another 10 minutes.

  6. Serve with cream 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, with its breast and merrythought reused as the minced filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and makes the minced filling smooth and easy to shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when melting the minced mixture in the stew-pan.
Flour
Dusted over the chicken to help the outside dry and brown lightly.
Minced chicken or veal
Adds bulk and a tender, finely textured meat to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling for 10 minutes, stirring carefully. A cream-based mixture can scorch on the bottom or separate if heated too hard, so gentle stirring keeps it smooth and evenly cooked.

“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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