Skip to main content
Main

Cremes De Volaille a I’Ecarlate

A creamy French dish made from pureed chicken and tongue mixed with sauce, aspic, and cream, garnished with tomato and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cremes De Volaille a I’Ecarlate

makes 6 to 8 moulds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and tongue

  1. Mince the chicken and tongue.

  2. Pound the minced chicken and tongue in a mortar until smooth.

  3. Mix the minced chicken and tongue with the sauce and ⅓ cup aspic.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Line the moulds

  1. Slice the tomato.

  2. Sauté the sliced tomato in butter over high heat.

  3. Strain the sautéed tomato through a fine sieve.

  4. Mix the strained tomato with ⅓ cup aspic.

  5. Line six to eight oval moulds with the tomato mixture.

  6. Decorate the bottoms of the moulds with sliced truffle.

  7. Mask the moulds one-third deep with white chaud-froid sauce.

Fill and set

  1. Whip the cream.

  2. Mix the whipped cream with the chicken puree before it sets.

  3. Add chopped tarragon and chervil to the mixture.

  4. Fill the moulds with the mixture.

  5. Refrigerate until set.

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. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the mousse-like filling.
Cooked tongue
Adds rich, dense flavour and texture to the chicken purée.
Cream
Whipped, it lightens the purée and gives the filling a smooth, airy texture.
Aspic
Gelatine-based setting agent that firms the filling and tomato lining as they chill.
Butter
Enriches the tomato with fat and carries flavour during sautéing.
Tomato
Forms a bright, slightly acidic lining that contrasts with the rich filling.

The step that matters

Mix the whipped cream with the chicken puree before it sets. Aspic and the sauce begin to gel as they cool. If the chicken purée sets first, the whipped cream cannot fold in evenly, leaving lumps and a heavy, dense texture instead of a light mousse.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, cream, tarragon, chervil, butter, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes