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Pulpton of Chicken, Rabbits, &C

A stuffed dish of chicken, sweetbread, mushrooms, artichoke bottoms, truffles, and morels encased in a fat‑flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Pulpton of Chicken, Rabbits, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Melt the veal suet or beef marrow in a stewpan over low heat until lukewarm.

  2. Mix the melted fat with flour and a little water to form a paste, then knead it well.

Line the mould

  1. Grease a mould with fresh butter and line it with vermicelli.

  2. Roll the paste to ½ inch thick and line the mould with it.

Fill, bake and serve

  1. Layer the chicken, sweetbread, mushrooms, artichoke bottoms, truffles, and morels inside the paste.

  2. Add a layer of light forcemeat, cover it with more paste, and seal it well.

  3. Brush the top with egg and bake gently until cooked through.

  4. To serve, turn it out of the mould, make a small hole in the top, and fill it with cullis.

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. Flour + artichoketop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + artichoketop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal suet or beef marrow
Adds rich fat that moistens the paste and gives it a tender, flaky-to-short texture.
Flour
Forms the paste with the melted fat, giving the crust structure to hold the filling.
Chicken
Provides the main savoury meat filling that cooks within the sealed crust.
Sweetbread
Adds a delicate, rich meat texture to the layered filling.
Truffles
Contribute a concentrated, earthy aroma to the filling.
Egg
Brushed on top, it helps the crust brown and seals the paste.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste. The paste must be sealed well so the filling stays moist and the juices do not leak out during gentle baking. A tight seal also keeps the crust intact when the pie is turned out of the mould.

“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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