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Galantine

A boiled, rolled fowl stuffed with layers of omelet, bacon, ham, forcemeat, and optional mushrooms, served with a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Galantine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Lay the boned fowl flat on a board, skin side down.

  2. Sprinkle the fowl with salt, pepper, and sweet herb.

  3. Make an omelet with the yolks of three eggs.

  4. Make an omelet with the whites of three eggs.

  5. Layer the yolk omelet on the fowl.

  6. Place bacon or ham over the yolk omelet.

  7. Place the white omelet over the bacon or ham.

  8. Place lean ham over the white omelet.

  9. Spread the forcemeat or sausage meat over the layers.

  10. Add mushrooms if desired.

  11. Roll the fowl tightly to resemble a pudding.

  12. Tie the rolled fowl in a cloth.

  13. Secure the cloth with tape.

Cook and press

  1. Boil the galantine slowly for two hours in stock or salted water with onion and turnip.

  2. Let the galantine cool in the cooking liquid.

  3. Press the galantine between two dishes with weights for twelve hours.

Coat and finish

  1. Prepare a thick white sauce with milk.

  2. When the sauce is nearly cold, stir in the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Spread the white sauce smoothly over the galantine using a large knife dipped in boiling water.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Forms the main body and meat that the rolled galantine is built around.
Egg yolks
Make the yolk omelet, adding richness and a tender, set layer.
Egg whites
Make the white omelet, giving a light, set layer that holds the rolls together.
Forcemeat or sausage meat
Adds a seasoned, moist filling that fills the roll and carries flavour.
Gelatine
Sets the white sauce so it forms a firm, smooth coating on the cold galantine.

The step that matters

Pressing the galantine for twelve hours. Pressing under even weight while cooling compacts the layers so they bind into a firm, neatly sliceable roll. Uneven or insufficient pressure can leave gaps and loose layers.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, ham, meat, mushroom, onion, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, ham, meat, mushroom, onion, milk. 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.

More galantine recipes

Veal 27Turkey 19Beef 17Chicken 15Fowl 10of Fowl 5 See all 12 →

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