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Poulet Aux Croutons

A roasted chicken served with bacon, livers, onions, herbs, and a wine sauce, accompanied by fried bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Poulet Aux Croutons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing with the chicken livers.

Roast the chicken

  1. Roast the chicken, covering it with bacon and paper.

Fry the croutons

  1. Fry the bread crusts in sweet oil and let them drain.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the same oil, brown the sliced onions until three-quarters done.

  2. Add chopped parsley, green onions, shallots, and the chicken livers to the onions.

  3. Moisten with white wine and cullis, then season with pepper and salt.

  4. Let the sauce boil gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve the chicken with the fried crusts on the side or pour the sauce over it.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Bacon
Covers the chicken while roasting, adding fat that keeps the meat moist and flavourful.
Chicken livers
Give the stuffing and sauce a rich, savoury depth and a soft texture.
Onions
Browning develops sweetness and deep flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps lift the browned flavours into the sauce.
Bread crusts
Frying in oil turns them crisp, giving the dish a crunchy contrast.

The step that matters

Let the sauce boil gently for 15 minutes. A gentle boil reduces the liquid and concentrates flavour without scorching the onions and livers. A hard, rapid boil can break the sauce and make it bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, bread, parsley, shallot, white wine, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, bread, parsley, shallot, white wine, pepper. 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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