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Chicken Pates

A pastry dish filled with seasoned chicken and a creamy sauce, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Pates

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Pates

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the cooked chicken and season well.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil and stir in the corn starch to thicken.

  3. Add butter, salt, and pepper to the sauce.

Bake and fill

  1. Line small pate pans with puff pastry.

  2. Bake the crust in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Fill the baked crusts with the chicken mixture and return to the oven for a few minutes to brown slightly.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Forms the main filling, providing the savoury bulk of the pates.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce that binds the minced chicken together.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered crust that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated in liquid to swell and gelatinise; if the milk is not simmering when it is stirred in, the sauce stays thin or turns lumpy, and the filling will not hold together in the crusts.

“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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