Skip to main content
Main

Petits Pates of Chicken Livers with Truffles

A savory pâté made from chicken livers and stewed truffles, finished with a sauce of sauce tournee, truffle liquor, butter, glaze, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Petits Pates of Chicken Livers with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Blanch the chicken livers and fry them gently in butter until cooked.

  2. Let the livers cool, then mince them into small squares along with the stewed truffles.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sauce tournee with a little truffle liquor for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Mix in a bit of butter and some glaze to make the sauce brown and strong, then add a squeeze of lemon.

Fill and serve

  1. Stir the sauce into the minced livers and truffles, then fill the petits pâtés.

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 + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

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

  3. Liver + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Chicken livers
Provide the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the pâté filling.
Sauce tournee
Binds the minced livers and truffles into a smooth, spreadable filling.
Truffles
Add a deep, earthy aroma that defines the dish.
Glaze
Adds colour and concentrated savoury depth to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a silky texture.

The step that matters

Frying the livers gently. High heat toughens liver proteins and can leave them grainy or dry. Gentle cooking keeps the livers tender and smooth, so the minced filling spreads well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Grapefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, butter, truffle, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes