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Mayonnaise De Volaille

A chilled poultry dish coated in mayonnaise and aspic, served on salad with cucumber, tarragon, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Cut the cold fowl into small joints.

  2. Steep the joints in a basin with oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the joints on a cloth until dry.

Coat and arrange

  1. Smoothly coat the joints with white mayonnaise sauce stiffened with aspic jelly.

  2. Arrange the fowl pieces on a thick bed of well-seasoned salad in a pyramid form.

  3. Garnish the base with chopped aspic jelly and neatly cut cucumber, and the top with sprigs of tarragon and chervil.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fowl
Provides the main meat, cut into joints that the dressing coats.
White mayonnaise sauce
Forms a smooth, creamy coating that clings to the fowl joints.
Aspic jelly
Stiffens the mayonnaise so the coating sets firm and holds its shape.
Well-seasoned salad
Forms the base bed that supports the arranged fowl pieces.

The step that matters

Drying the joints before coating. Surface moisture thins the mayonnaise and stops it clinging evenly, so the joints should be drained on a cloth until dry before coating.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, sauce, tarragon, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, sauce, tarragon, chervil. 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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