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Chaud-froid of Becasse

A chilled dish of game birds served with a butter and port sauce and set in various jellies, garnished with cress and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chaud-froid of Becasse

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the birds

  1. Cook the game birds, basting with butter.

  2. Use the remaining butter to make a sauce, adding port, mushroom ketchup, currant jelly, anchovy essence, and gelatine.

Glaze and set

  1. Cut the birds into joints and baste three times with the sauce.

  2. Set the joints in jelly.

Prepare and serve

  1. Prepare mushroom, tomato, and brown jelly in pans and cut them into dice.

  2. Arrange the game around an entree dish, pile the jelly in the center, and create a border with cress and diced celery.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Game birds
Provide the main cooked meat, which is basted with butter to stay moist and browned.
Gelatine
Sets the sauce and jelly so the cut joints hold their shape when chilled.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruity note to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Basting the joints with the sauce three times. Each thin layer of sauce must be allowed to set before the next is added, or the coating will run off and look patchy. Gelatine only firms as it cools, so the sauce needs to be cool enough to cling but still liquid enough to spread.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, tomato, celery):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, tomato, celery. 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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