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Croutes De Foie De Volaille

A dish of chicken livers wrapped in bacon, broiled and served on toasted bread with butter‑mustard spread and meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Croutes De Foie De Volaille

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the chicken livers and cut them in half.

  2. Sprinkle the livers with pepper and roll each piece in a slice of bacon.

Cook and assemble

  1. Broil the livers over a brisk coal fire.

  2. Mix the butter with the mustard and a pinch of cayenne.

  3. Spread the mixture on the croûtes.

  4. Place the broiled livers and bacon on the croûtes.

  5. Brush with liquid meat glaze, garnish with fried parsley, and serve quickly.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Provide the rich, tender main filling that forms the body of each croûte.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that crisps as it cooks and flavours the livers.
Butter
Carries the mustard and cayenne and adds richness to the bread base.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the livers and butter.

The step that matters

Broil the livers over a brisk coal fire. Livers cook quickly and become dry and grainy if overcooked. A hot, fast heat sears the outside while keeping the centre soft and moist.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, butter, pepper, bread, meat):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, butter, pepper, bread, meat. 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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