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Fillets of Chicken a LA Reine

A chicken fillet dish topped with bechamel sauce mixed with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fillets of Chicken a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken fillets and lay them in butter.

  2. Cook quickly over the fire, keeping them white.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour hot bechamel sauce over the fillets, mixing it with 2 egg yolks and 2 teaspoons of cream, but do not let it boil.

  2. Boil 1 egg yolk and half a chicken breast, rub through a fine sieve, and mix with the sauce.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Chicken fillets
Provide the main protein, which firms and turns white when cooked quickly.
Bechamel sauce
Forms the creamy base that coats the chicken.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when mixed in gently.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor while the chicken cooks gently.
Cream
Adds moisture and smoothness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot sauce. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

“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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