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Chicken Pates

Chicken pâtés made with cold chopped chicken, butter, eggs, parsley, and sea salt, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Pates

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chicken Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the chopped chicken well.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the drawn butter over heat.

  3. Stir in the minced hard-boiled eggs and chopped parsley.

  4. Add the seasoned chicken and let it almost boil.

Fill and serve

  1. Remove the pastry from the pans while hot and fill with the chicken mixture.

  2. Place the filled pastries in the oven to heat.

  3. Arrange on a dish and serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and provides the savory meat base.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying the flavor through the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Thicken the filling slightly and add a soft, creamy texture.
Pastry patty pans
Act as the baked shell that holds the filling and gives a crisp contrast.

The step that matters

Letting the chicken mixture almost boil. Bringing the butter and chicken mixture close to boiling heats the meat through and helps it bind with the butter. Overheating can toughen the chicken and make the filling greasy or dry, so keep it at a gentle heat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, egg. 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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