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Of White Masking

A boiled chicken served with a white gelatin sauce made from broth, butter, flour, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Of White Masking

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken or fowl gently with onions, carrots, celery, herbs, and seasoning until cooked.

  2. Ensure there are at least 3 pints of broth remaining after cooking.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the broth to the roux, stirring until thickened to make a sauce blonde.

  3. Dissolve the gelatine in warm broth and stir it into the hot sauce.

  4. Pass the sauce through a sieve to remove lumps.

  5. Allow the sauce to cool until it begins to firm up.

Coat and finish

  1. Place the cold chicken on a large dish and use a funnel to pour the sauce over it evenly.

  2. Remove any excess sauce that solidifies on the dish for later use.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or fowl
Provides the main cooked meat that the sauce coats and sets around.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavour and helping the flour cook smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a sauce when cooked with the butter as a roux.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled sauce into a firm, jelly-like coating on the chicken.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Let the sauce cool until it begins to firm up. Pouring sauce that is still too hot or too thin will run off the chicken instead of coating it. Gelatine sets as it cools, so the sauce must thicken slightly before it is spooned or poured over the cold chicken for an even, lasting coat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, butter, flour. 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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