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Chicken Coquilles

A baked chicken dish with sweetbread, mushrooms, truffles, and cream, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Coquilles

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.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Rub in the flour and stir in the chicken, sweetbread, mushrooms, and truffles.

  3. Add cream if the mixture gets too thick.

  4. Season with white pepper, cayenne, and salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the shell with the mixture.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs.

  3. Place in a dripping pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  4. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and protein of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the liquid into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor while the flour is cooked into the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and smoothness, loosening the mixture as it thickens.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. The bread crumb topping browns through dry heat in the oven. Pulling it too early leaves the top pale and soft, while leaving it too long can dry the filling underneath.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, truffle, flour, butter, pepper, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, truffle, flour, butter, pepper, cream. 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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