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Puffs W Ith Chicken, &C

A puff pastry filled with a mixture of chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, shallots, cayenne, mace, and béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Puffs W Ith Chicken, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, shallots, cayenne, mace, and béchamel sauce.

  2. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, then let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry thinly and cut into square pieces.

  2. Place some of the mixture on each square, fold the pastry over, and seal the edges with a jagged iron.

  3. Fry the puffs in boiling lard until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried parsley underneath.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken breast
Provides the main body and bulk of the savoury filling.
Béchamel sauce
Binds the filling together and keeps it moist during cooking.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, layered shell that puffs and browns when fried.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before assembling. A hot or wet filling softens the thin pastry, making it tear or steam instead of puffing; cooling firms the mixture so the seal holds and the pastry stays crisp when fried.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, lemon, shallot, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, lemon, shallot, pepper. 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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