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Menu for a Party of Eight

A dish of cold fowl mixed with a sauce, served in pancakes with truffles and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the skin from the fowl and set aside.

  2. Break up the carcass and place it in a saucepan with enough stock to cover it.

  3. Add the onions, garlic, carrot, herbs, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer for as long as possible.

  5. Add ½ cup of sherry and bring the broth to a boil.

  6. Strain the mixture, remove any fat, and reduce the sauce slightly.

  7. Thicken with butter and flour.

  8. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks and lime juice.

  9. Let cool.

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the truffles and sauté in melted butter with ⅓ cup of Madeira and a little stock.

  2. Once boiling, remove from heat and pour into a bowl.

  3. Make 8 thin pancakes, each 5 inches long and 4 inches wide.

  4. Set aside.

  5. Finely mince the cold fowl, mixing it with the cooled sauce and the truffle cooking liquid.

  6. Stir in a raw egg off the heat and let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. On a large dish, spread the pancakes and top each with thinly sliced cooked bacon.

  2. Add the cooked truffles and a tablespoon of the fowl mince on each.

  3. Fold the pancakes over and seal with egg white and bread crumbs.

  4. Bake on a well-buttered dish until pale brown.

  5. Serve on a napkin.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich its texture as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Thickens the butter-based roux that gives the sauce body.
Raw egg
Binds the minced fowl filling so it holds together when folded and baked.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the truffles and browning the pancakes.
Truffles
Provide the earthy, aromatic flavour that defines the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and lime juice off the heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and curdle or scramble if overheated, leaving a grainy sauce. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, carrot, pepper, sherry, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, carrot, pepper, sherry, butter, flour. 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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