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Menu for a Party of Eight

A party dish of cooked fowl served with a truffle‑infused sauce, pancakes, bacon, and bread crumbs.

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 cooked fowl and set aside the white meat.

  2. Break up the carcass and place it in a saucepan with stock, onions, garlic, carrot, herbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer the mixture for as long as possible.

  4. Add sherry and bring to a boil.

  5. Strain the broth and remove any fat.

  6. Reduce the sauce slightly.

  7. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  8. Stir in beaten egg yolks and lime juice.

  9. Let it cool.

Prepare the truffles and pancakes

  1. Sauté truffle slices in melted butter.

  2. Add Madeira and stock.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Prepare pancakes and cut them into 8 pieces, each 5 inches long and 4 inches wide.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the cold fowl with the cooled sauce and the truffle cooking liquid.

  2. Stir in a raw egg.

  3. Spread pancakes on a dish, cover with bacon, add truffles, and a tablespoon of the fowl mixture on each.

  4. Fold the pancakes and secure with egg white.

  5. Coat with bread crumbs.

  6. Bake until pale brown.

  7. 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 add richness as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the sauce together with butter by swelling as it cooks.
Raw egg
Binds the fowl mixture so it holds together inside the pancakes.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that gives the dish its main flavour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when the pancakes are baked.

The step that matters

Stir in beaten egg yolks and lime juice. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle if the sauce boils after they are added. Keep the heat low and stir steadily so the sauce stays 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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