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Blanquette of Chicken

A creamy chicken soup with mushrooms, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Blanquette of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the chicken broth in a saucepan.

  2. Add the mushrooms and simmer until tender.

  3. Gently add the sliced chicken and cook until heated through.

  4. Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks until the sauce is smooth and creamy.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavor of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Mushrooms
Soften during simmering and add earthy flavor and texture.
Cold chicken
Provides the main protein, gently reheated in the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot or the yolks are added all at once, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding them gradually, off the boil, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

“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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