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Chicken Escalopes

Chicken escalopes are chicken legs stuffed with veal, bacon, mushrooms, truffle, and spinach purée, simmered in a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 filling

  1. Chop and pound the veal and bacon smoothly.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Mix the puréed meat with diced mushrooms and truffle.

  4. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  5. Bind the mixture with the egg yolks.

Stuff and shape the legs

  1. Bone the chicken legs.

  2. Stuff the chicken legs with the meat mixture.

  3. Shape the stuffed legs into rolls.

Braise the chicken

  1. Melt 14 oz of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add sliced vegetables to the butter.

  3. Place the chicken legs on top of the vegetables.

  4. Cover and fry gently for 20 minutes.

  5. Add stock to cover the vegetables.

  6. Place a buttered paper over the chicken.

  7. Cover the pot.

  8. Cook gently for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the remaining butter.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Cook until a brown roux forms.

  4. Remove the chicken legs and keep them warm.

  5. Strain the stock into the brown roux.

  6. Stir until boiling.

  7. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  8. Add sherry and lemon juice.

  9. Season to taste.

  10. Cut the chicken legs into 4-inch slices.

  11. Arrange the slices on a bed of spinach.

  12. Pour the sauce around before serving.

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

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

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

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

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken legs
Form the outer case, holding the stuffing in a boned, rolled shape while they braise.
Veal
Forms the smooth, tender body of the stuffing once finely pounded and sieved.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when the legs are sliced.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter to form a roux.
Butter
Fats that fry the vegetables and enrich the braising liquid and sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the brown roux. Flour must be cooked in the butter until it browns; this cooks out raw starch taste and thickens the sauce evenly. Stirring in stock too early or under-browning leaves the sauce floury and pale.

“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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