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Chicken Mould

A minced chicken mixture with bacon, breadcrumbs, lime rind, and egg white, steamed and served with parsley and butter or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bones from the chicken parts and mince the meat.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, minced bacon or ham, thyme, grated lime rind, breadcrumbs, and whipped egg white.

  3. Mix well and transfer to a buttered basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1.5 hours.

  2. Turn out onto a plate and pour over parsley and butter or white sauce.

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. Thyme + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,173 recipes

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

  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 breast, wings, and neck
Provides the main body of the mould, which holds together once cooked.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help the minced meat hold a soft, tender texture.
Whipped egg white
Traps air and helps the mixture set lightly and stay tender when steamed.
Minced bacon or ham
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the mould moist.

The step that matters

Mixing in the whipped egg white. Folding the whipped egg white in gently keeps the air bubbles intact, so the mould steams up light rather than dense and rubbery.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limethe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, ham, thyme, egg. 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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