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Chicken Escalopes

Chicken legs stuffed with veal, bacon, mushrooms, truffle, and spinach purée, simmered in stock and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Chicken Escalopes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Chop and pound the veal and bacon until smooth, then rub through a fine sieve.

  2. Mix the spinach purée with the diced mushrooms and truffle, season with salt and pepper, and bind with the egg.

  3. Bone the chicken legs and stuff them with the prepared mixture, shaping them like rolls.

Braise the chicken

  1. In a stewpan, heat 14 oz of butter or fat with the sliced vegetables, then lay the chicken legs on top.

  2. Cover and fry gently for about 20 minutes.

  3. Add stock to cover three‑quarters of the vegetables, place greased paper over the chicken, cover, and cook gently for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt 1.5 oz of butter or fat, stir in the flour, and cook until a brown roux forms.

  2. Remove the chicken legs when cooked and keep them warm.

  3. Strain the stock into the brown roux, stir until boiling, simmer for about 20 minutes, then add sherry (if using) and lemon juice, seasoning to taste.

  4. Cut the chicken legs into ½‑inch slices and arrange them overlapping on a bed of spinach, then strain the sauce around and serve.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken legs
Provides the meat that is boned, stuffed, rolled and braised until tender.
Veal
Gives the stuffing a fine, smooth, tender texture when pounded and sieved.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the stuffing moist and rich.
Butter
Browns the chicken during frying and carries flavour into the braise.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux, and cooking it brown adds colour and nutty flavour.
Stock
Forms the braising liquid and becomes the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the brown roux. The flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken well, but must stop before it burns, since over-dark roux loses thickening power and turns bitter.

“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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