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Chicken Escalopes

A dish of boned chicken legs stuffed with veal, bacon, mushrooms, and truffle, simmered in stock and served over spinach puree.

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 meat puree with the diced mushrooms and truffle, season with salt and pepper, and bind with the egg yolks.

  3. Stuff the boned chicken legs with the meat mixture, shaping them like rolls.

Braise the chicken

  1. Melt 1 oz of butter in a stew pan, add the sliced vegetables, and place the chicken legs on top.

  2. Fry gently for 20 minutes, then add stock to cover the vegetables.

  3. Cover with a buttered paper and cook gently for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In the meantime, melt the remaining butter, stir in the flour, and cook until a brown roux forms.

  2. Once the chicken is cooked, remove it and keep warm.

  3. Strain the stock into the brown roux, stir until boiling, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the sherry and lemon juice, season to taste, and keep hot.

Serve

  1. Slice the chicken legs into 1-inch pieces, arrange them overlapping on a bed of spinach puree, strain the sauce around, and 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
Provide the main meat, which is rolled around the stuffing and gently braised until tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the meat puree so the stuffing holds its shape when cooked.
Veal
Adds a fine, smooth texture to the stuffing when pounded and sieved.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked with butter as a roux.
Butter
Enriches the braising and roux, adding richness and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the brown roux. Cooking the butter and flour until brown gives the sauce its colour and nutty flavour; stirring steadily prevents scorching and lumps before the stock is added.

“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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