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Vol-au-vent of Chicken

A puff pastry case filled with a chicken and mushroom sauce, topped with stewed button mushrooms in white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Vol-au-vent of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the case

  1. Make a puff pastry case and bake it until golden.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine chicken stock and a little flour to thicken.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and nutmeg, then bring to a boil.

  3. Add chopped mushrooms and milk, then stir in the minced chicken.

  4. Cook until the mushrooms are tender and the mixture is heated through.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked puff pastry case with the chicken mixture.

  2. Garnish with button mushrooms stewed in white sauce on top.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff paste
Forms the crisp, golden case that holds the filling.
Cold chicken meat
Provides the main protein and substance of the filling.
Chicken stock
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the filling holds together rather than running.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, moist texture to the filling.
Milk
Enriches the sauce, adding creaminess and mellowing the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until heated through. Flour thickens only when the liquid reaches a simmer and is stirred, so the sauce must be cooked fully to lose its raw flour taste and set to a spoonable thickness. Cooking the mushrooms until tender also ensures they soften rather than stay firm.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, flour, mushroom, milk, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, flour, mushroom, milk, 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.

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