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Poulet Aux Truffes

A roasted chicken stuffed with truffles, carrot, mace, pepper, and salt, simmered with bacon, lemon, bay leaf, cloves, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Poulet Aux Truffes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone and skin the fowl.

  2. Stuff the fowl with truffles, carrot, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Tie the fowl lightly and place it on slices of bacon.

  4. Slice the lemon and place it over the fowl after removing the rind.

Simmer

  1. In a casserole, add bay leaf, cloves, carrot, onion, and enough water to cover the fowl.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 hours, adding embers over the pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the liquid and add strong gravy and sliced truffles.

  2. Continue to stew gently for 45 minutes and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Truffles
Supply the dish's distinctive earthy aroma, which depends on the flavour compounds they carry.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savour that keep the lean fowl moist and flavourful during slow cooking.
Strong gravy
Adds body and concentrated savoury flavour to the finished cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Add the sliced truffles after straining, then stew only gently. Truffle aroma is volatile and fades with prolonged heat, so adding them late preserves more of it. A vigorous boil would also toughen the fowl and dull the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, carrot, pepper, lemon, clove, onion):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, carrot, pepper, lemon, clove, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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