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Dessert

Chicken Creams, a LA Grahame

A custard-like dish of chicken, ham, panada, eggs, sherry, and brown sauce baked in molds and served with spinach purée and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Creams, a LA Grahame

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound and sieve the ham and chicken.

  2. Pound the panada.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs to the panada.

  4. Mix all ingredients together.

  5. Pound the mixture again.

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the glaze in the brown sauce.

  2. Add the sherry to the sauce.

  3. Whip the egg whites to a froth.

  4. Blend everything lightly.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

Mould and cook

  1. Butter small fancy molds.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture.

  3. Cook in a bain-marie for 20 to 30 minutes.

  4. Turn out the molds.

Serve

  1. Serve on a shallow ring croustade with a spinach purée in the center.

  2. Pour thickened gravy made from the bones around the dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the mousseline and gives it a light, delicate texture.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the mixture, and whipped whites lighten it while helping it set.
Panada
Acts as a binder that adds moisture and keeps the creams tender and cohesive.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the chicken mixture.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cook in a bain-marie for 20 to 30 minutes. A gentle water bath keeps the egg-rich mixture below the temperature where proteins tighten too far. Cooking it too hot makes the creams curdle, weep, or turn rubbery.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, egg, sherry, sauce, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, egg, sherry, sauce, pepper, lemon. 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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