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Chicken a LA Princesse

Chicken à la Princesse is chicken fillets coated in aspic and béchamel, set in a mold with salad and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,512 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Cut fillets from the chicken breasts, about ½ inch thick, and set aside.

  2. Make béchamel sauce.

  3. Stir 2 tablespoons of aspic into the béchamel sauce.

  4. Cover the fillets with the sauce.

  5. Place the fillets apart on a dish.

  6. Let the fillets cool slightly.

  7. Turn the fillets over.

  8. Sauce the other side of the fillets.

Coat with aspic

  1. Pour cold, unset aspic over the fillets to cover them completely.

  2. Let the aspic firm up.

  3. Use a round cutter to cut the fillets into round pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour remaining aspic into an oval mold.

  2. Let the aspic cool.

  3. Turn out the aspic.

  4. Arrange the cutlets around the border of the mold.

  5. Fill the center of the mold with salad and mayonnaise.

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. Chicken + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together4,512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish as the cooked fillets that are sauced and set in aspic.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gel that coats the fillets and holds the dish together when turned out.
Béchamel sauce
Creamy white coating that covers the fillets and gives a smooth, rich layer under the aspic.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and creamy moisture to the salad filling in the centre of the mold.

The step that matters

Pour cold, unset aspic over the fillets. The aspic must be cold and only just liquid so it spreads into an even layer without melting the béchamel underneath. If it is too warm or too thick, the coating turns patchy or slides off, and it must firm fully before cutting.

“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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