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Good Chicken Patties

A dish of minced chicken mixed with butter and white sauce, served in patty crusts or vol-au-vents.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Good Chicken Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the white flesh from the fowl.

  2. Cut the fowl into pieces.

  3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat.

  4. Add the chicken pieces to the butter.

  5. Season the chicken with salt, mace, and cayenne.

  6. Stew the chicken gently for about 10 minutes without browning.

  7. Transfer the chicken to a dish with the butter and its own gravy.

  8. Let the chicken cool.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the cooled chicken with a sharp knife.

  2. Heat the minced chicken in a little good white sauce without boiling.

  3. Optionally, stew a few mushrooms with the chicken.

  4. Optionally, mince the mushrooms with the chicken.

  5. If desired, mix the minced chicken with strong gravy.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the patty crusts or vol-au-vents with the chicken mixture just before serving.

  2. If desired, bake the filled patties for 15-18 minutes.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mace + mushroomtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which is gently stewed in butter until tender and then minced for the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the chicken stew gently without drying out.
White sauce
Binds the minced chicken into a moist, creamy filling.

The step that matters

Stew the chicken without browning. Gentle stewing in butter keeps the meat tender and pale. Browning or boiling toughens the protein and dries the filling, and a boiling white sauce can curdle or separate.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mushroom. 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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