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Chicken Forcemeat

Chicken forcemeat is a roasted chicken wrapped in veal caul, braised in tomato, lemon, oyster liquor, and Chablis, served with fried mushrooms and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the chicken

  1. Wrap the chicken in veal caul and hang it before a clear coke fire.

  2. After 1 hour, remove the caul and pour the boiling mixture of tomato juice, lemon juice, oyster liquor, and Chablis over the chicken.

  3. Baste continually and dredge with savory flour made from dried flour, salt, cayenne, and mace.

  4. When browned all over, remove excess fat from the gravy and pour it into a separate vessel.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken surrounded by fried mushrooms and oysters.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through as the meat that is basted and browned.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture to the basting liquid, helping flavor and color the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the basting liquid and balances the richness of the fat.
Oyster liquor
Contributes a salty, briny flavor to the basting liquid and the gravy.
Chablis
Adds acidity and wine flavor to the basting liquid, helping build the gravy.
Dried flour
Dusted over the chicken as savory flour, it helps form a browned crust during roasting.

The step that matters

Baste continually and dredge with savory flour. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist while the flour dusting browns and sets a crust. Stopping early can leave the skin pale or the coating uneven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, tomato, lemon, oyster, flour, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, tomato, lemon, oyster, flour, 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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