Skip to main content
Main

Chickens, a LA Dauphine

Two spring chickens stuffed with a mushroom‑parsley quenelle, wrapped in bacon, and simmered with carrot, onion, and mirepoix.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chickens, a LA Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the chickens

  1. Draw and bone the chickens, leaving the legs and wings intact.

  2. Fill the void with quenelle of fowl mixed with chopped mushrooms and parsley.

  3. Truss the chickens to maintain their shape.

  4. Rub the chickens with lemon juice and cover the breasts with bacon.

  5. Wrap the chickens in buttered paper and place them in a stewpan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add carrot, onion, and a garnished faggot, then moisten with light mirepoix.

  2. Simmer gently by the side of a slow fire for about 45 minutes.

  3. Drain the chickens, remove the string, and serve with the clarified essence.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spring chickens
Provide the main meat, which is boned and stuffed before gentle simmering.
Quenelle of fowl
Forms a light, tender stuffing that fills the boned cavity and stays moist during cooking.
Fat bacon
Covers the breasts, adding fat that keeps the lean meat moist during simmering.
Light mirepoix
Moistens the pot and releases aromatic flavour into the gently simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently by the side of a slow fire. Gentle heat keeps the poultry and its quenelle stuffing tender. A rapid boil toughens muscle proteins and can break up the delicate quenelle, so the liquid should barely tremble.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, parsley, carrot, onion, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, parsley, carrot, onion, 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 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes