Skip to main content
Main

Blanc to Boil Chickens in

A chicken boiled in a white sauce made from veal, bacon, butter, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,677 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Blanc to Boil Chickens in

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the veal and bacon into small pieces.

  2. Place them in a stewpan with the butter and do not allow them to brown.

  3. Pour boiling water over the meat while it is still white.

  4. Add the clove, bay leaf, sweet herbs, and shallot.

  5. Stew until sufficiently cooked.

Finish the chicken

  1. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve over the chicken.

  2. Simmer the chicken in the strained liquid for 30 minutes.

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. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

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

  3. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  4. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + chickentop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides savory meat flavor and body to the stock that becomes the sauce.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the stewed liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor while the meat is gently cooked without browning.
Whole chicken
The main protein, gently simmered in the strained liquid until cooked through.

The step that matters

Do not let the meat brown. The recipe calls for cooking the meat in butter while it stays white. Browning creates darker, stronger flavors and color, which would turn the sauce away from the pale, delicate style the dish is meant to have.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, shallot, chicken):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, shallot, chicken. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes