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Puree a LA Princesse

A creamy chicken puree made with butter, stock, lemon, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Also mentioned in the method: flour

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and wash it well.

  2. In a buttered stewpan, add the chicken, onion, mace, bay leaf, parsley, and peppercorns. Cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes without browning.

  3. Add the stock and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, melt 2 ounces of butter and 2 ounces of flour together.

  2. Strain the chicken liquor into the butter and flour mixture, stirring well. Cook for a few minutes.

  3. Add the lemon juice and cream.

Finish the puree

  1. Remove the best pieces of chicken from the bones. Pound the pieces.

  2. Add them to the stock.

  3. Strain the mixture through a tammy cloth, ensuring it does not boil after adding chicken and cream.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Mace + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and flavour that the puree is built on.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour when cooked with the flour.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished puree.

The step that matters

Do not let the mixture boil after adding the chicken and cream. Boiling a cream-enriched mixture can cause it to curdle and separate, leaving the puree grainy and thin rather than smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, onion, parsley, veal, lemon, cream):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, parsley, veal, lemon, cream. 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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