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Chicken Escalopes

Stuffed chicken legs with veal, bacon, mushrooms, truffle, and spinach purée, simmered in stock and served with a brown roux sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Escalopes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Chop and pound the veal and bacon smoothly, then pass through a fine sieve.

  2. Mix the purée with diced mushrooms and truffle, season with salt and pepper, and bind with the egg.

  3. Bone the chicken legs and stuff them with the prepared mixture, shaping them like rolls.

Braise the chicken

  1. Heat 1½ oz of butter or fat with sliced vegetables in a stewpan.

  2. Place the chicken legs on top.

  3. Cover and fry gently for about 20 minutes.

  4. Add stock to cover the vegetables.

  5. Place greased paper over the chicken, cover the stewpan and cook gently for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1½ oz of butter or fat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until a brown roux forms.

  3. Remove the cooked chicken from the stewpan and keep it warm.

  4. Strain the stock into the brown roux, stir until boiling, then simmer for about 20 minutes.

  5. Add sherry and lemon juice, then season to taste.

Serve

  1. Slice the chicken legs into ½-inch pieces and arrange them on a bed of spinach.

  2. Pour the sauce around the pieces.

  3. Serve.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken legs
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow gentle cooking.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked into a roux.
Butter or good fat
Carries flavour and adds richness while frying the vegetables and chicken.
Veal
Gives the stuffing a smooth, tender texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the smooth stuffing.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux to a brown colour. Cooking flour in fat until brown develops nutty flavour and colour, but stopping too early leaves a raw floury taste and stirring keeps it from scorching and lumping.

“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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