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Force-meat Chartreuses

A molded dish of ragout, force-meat, mushrooms, fowl fillets, and truffles, steamed and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Force-meat Chartreuses

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

  1. Smooth the cavity of the mould with a spoon dipped in hot water.

  2. Fill it with the ragout d la Toulouse, leaving an inch from the top.

  3. Cover with force-meat, keeping the paper on, and refrigerate until two hours before serving.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the chartreuse in a deep stewpan with boiling water halfway up the mould.

  2. Cover the stewpan with a lid and live embers of charcoal.

  3. Once done, carefully turn it out onto a dish.

  4. Garnish the top with button mushrooms and a star of fowl fillets decorated with black truffles.

  5. Glaze the sides lightly and serve.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

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

  3. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Force-meat
Forms the outer layer that sets during steaming and gives the chartreuse its smooth finished shell.
Fillets of fowl
Provide tender, delicate meat for the decorative star on top of the finished chartreuse.
Black truffles
Add a dark, earthy aroma and visual contrast to the garnish.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the mixture moist as it steams.

The step that matters

Steaming with the water halfway up the mould. Gentle, moist heat from boiling water set partway up the mould cooks the chartreuse evenly without overheating the delicate force-meat. Too little water or too fierce a heat can leave the mixture dry, cracked, or unevenly set.

“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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