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Chaud-froid of Chicken

A chilled chicken dish served with a white chaud-froid sauce, mayonnaise salad, and aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chaud-froid of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into neat joints and remove the skin.

  2. Chop off the ends of the bones and lay the joints on a rack.

Coat and decorate

  1. Coat the joints several times with the chaud-froid sauce.

  2. Decorate with neatly cut pieces of truffle, cucumber skin, and a little chervil or cress.

  3. Pour a little cold liquid aspic jelly over the chicken and set aside to firm.

Arrange and serve

  1. Prepare a bed of mayonnaise salad on an entree dish and arrange the chicken joints neatly on it.

  2. Decorate with chopped jelly and crimped cucumber.

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. Chervil + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Sauce + cherviltop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together262 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + cherviltop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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 body of the dish, carved into joints for even presentation.
Chaud-froid sauce
Coats the chicken in a smooth, set layer that gives the dish its finish.
Aspic jelly
Sets over the coated chicken to form a glossy, firm glaze.
Mayonnaise salad
Provides a creamy base under the chicken, adding richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Pouring the cold liquid aspic. The aspic must be cold and only just liquid so it spreads thinly and sets without melting the chaud-froid coating beneath it or running off the chicken.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, truffle, cucumber):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, truffle, cucumber. 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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