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Chicken Puffs

Chicken puffs are pastry squares filled with a seasoned chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, shallot, and lemon peel mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine minced chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, shallot, and lemon peel in a pan.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, cayenne, and mace.

  3. Heat for a few moments in white sauce.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut puff pastry into squares.

  2. Place a spoonful of the mixture on each square.

  3. Fold the pastry over the filling and seal the edges.

  4. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

Serve

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

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

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken breast
Forms the bulk of the filling and provides the main savory protein.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the filling.
White sauce
Binds the minced filling together and keeps it moist.
Puff pastry
Its layers puff and turn crisp and flaky when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, producing a golden, crisp crust.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to crisp and brown the pastry quickly. If it is too cool, the pastry absorbs fat and turns greasy before it sets and browns.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, shallot, lemon, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, anchovy, parsley, shallot, lemon, pepper. 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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