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Paste Croustades a LA Financiere

A pastry shell filled with a mixture of cocks' combs, kernels, mushrooms, foie gras, fowl, truffles, and chicken forcemeat in Spanish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Paste Croustades a LA Financiere

a dozen small Croustade molds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the salt and egg yolks, then work in enough water to make a soft paste.

  3. Wrap the paste in a cloth and chill it on ice.

  4. Roll out the paste and line a dozen small Croustade molds.

Bake the cases

  1. Fill the molds with flour to hold the paste in place while baking.

  2. Bake until the paste is light brown and crisp.

  3. Remove the flour, brush the insides with egg, and return to the oven for 2-3 minutes.

Fill and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the cocks' combs, kernels, mushrooms, foie gras, fowl, and truffles with chicken forcemeat.

  2. Add the Spanish sauce and stir until it coats the spoon.

  3. Fill the baked Croustades with the mixture.

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 + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the paste and makes it tender and flaky as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste that holds the case shape.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste into a workable dough.
Foie gras
Adds rich, buttery fat that melts into the filling.
Spanish sauce
Binds the filling and gives it body so it coats the spoon.
Chicken forcemeat
Binds the diced meats and gives the filling a soft, cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Bake the cases blind with flour. Filling the molds with flour supports the thin paste so it keeps its shape instead of slumping. Brushing the baked cases with egg and returning them briefly to the oven seals the surface so the filling does not soak in and soften the crust.

“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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