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Mayonnaise De Volaille

Cold boiled chicken pieces coated in mayonnaise and aspic jelly, served atop seasoned salad with cucumber and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mayonnaise De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Cut the cold fowl into small joints.

  2. Soak the joints in a basin with oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the joints on a cloth until dry.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Spread white mayonnaise sauce mixed with a little aspic jelly over the fowl pieces.

  2. Arrange the fowl on a thick bed of well-seasoned salad in a pyramid shape.

  3. Garnish with chopped aspic jelly, neatly cut cucumber, and sprigs of tarragon and chervil.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fowl
Provides the main meat, which is cut into joints and dressed for the salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture, coating the fowl with a smooth, creamy layer.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a glossy, savoury layer that adds flavour and a polished finish.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture to the fowl during the soak.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fowl during the soak.

The step that matters

Drain the joints on a cloth until dry. Surface moisture would thin the mayonnaise sauce and make it slide off the fowl, so the joints should be patted fully dry before coating.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, sauce, tarragon, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, sauce, tarragon, chervil. 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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