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Menu for a Party of Eight

A steamed savory pudding made with chicken, bacon, mushrooms, truffles, almonds, and eggs, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Work the meat of the fowl and bacon together for 5 minutes over medium heat.

  2. Pound the mixture into a paste, then add soaked bread and white mushrooms.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, moistening with gravy or milk.

  4. Add 4 raw eggs and mix well.

Mold and steam

  1. Butter a mold and decorate with thinly sliced truffles.

  2. Fill the mold with the puree, adding diced truffles, and steam it like a pudding.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Chop the remaining mushrooms and stir them into the sauce.

  2. Pound the almonds to a paste and add to the sauce while heating.

  3. Before serving, stir in 1 tablespoon of cream off the heat.

  4. Pour the sauce over the chicken mold and serve hot.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of the fowl
Forms the main body of the pudding and gives it its savory flavor.
Raw eggs
Bind the puree so it sets firm when steamed.
Crumb of bread soaked in stock
Adds softness and moisture to the puree.
White mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the filling and sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream off the heat. Cream added to a very hot sauce can curdle or separate. Stirring it in off the heat keeps the sauce smooth and rich.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, mushroom, milk, egg, butter, truffle):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, mushroom, milk, egg, butter, truffle. 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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