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Stuffed Chicken Legs

A chicken leg stuffed with ground chicken, egg whites, and sautéed aromatics, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Stuffed Chicken Legs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion, mushrooms, and truffle; sauté for a few minutes. Remove the onion, mushrooms, and truffle from the pan.

  3. Stir in the flour and blend well, then add the cream, salt, and pepper; cook until thick.

  4. Stir in the sherry wine and return the onions, mushrooms, and truffle to the mixture.

  5. In a bowl, combine the ground chicken breast with the egg whites; mix thoroughly.

  6. Spread the chicken mixture on a dish to cool.

Stuff and cook

  1. Remove the bone from the raw chicken leg and fill it with the mixture; sew it up.

  2. Broil the stuffed leg in butter until cooked through.

  3. Serve hot with drawn butter or cold.

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Chicken breast
Forms the main body of the filling, giving it its meaty bulk and texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, and thickens with the flour into a smooth base.
Egg whites
Bind the chopped chicken so the filling holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside of the leg brown during broiling.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Truffle
Adds a strong earthy aroma that flavors the filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the chicken mixture before stuffing. Spreading the mixture out to cool keeps it from becoming too warm and loose, so it holds its shape when packed into the leg and sewn closed. Egg whites set when heated, so a warm, runny filling could leak or cook unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, egg, butter, flour, mushroom, truffle):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, egg, butter, flour, mushroom, truffle. 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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