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Little Chicken Creams a LA Francillon

A small chicken cream molded and poached, served with velouté sauce and garnished with peas or cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Little Chicken Creams a LA Francillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the raw chicken until smooth.

  2. Mix the panard, béchamel sauce, butter, salt, and white pepper into the chicken until smooth.

  3. Work in the eggs and pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Stir in the thick cream.

Fill the molds

  1. Butter the egg molds and decorate with cucumber or peas.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture using a piping bag.

  3. Create a well in the center with a wet finger and fill it with cooked asparagus peas and velouté sauce.

Poach and serve

  1. Join the molds and poach them in boiling water for about 15 minutes, keeping them upright in a darial.

  2. Turn out the molds and serve on a border of potato or farce, pouring velouté sauce around them and garnishing with peas, cucumber, or asparagus points.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw chicken
Forms the main body of the creams, setting into a smooth, firm custard-like texture when poached.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it during poaching, giving the creams their structure.
Panard (bread crumbs)
Absorbs moisture and adds body, helping the mixture hold together.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mixture tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Thick cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the mixture softer and more delicate.

The step that matters

Poaching the molds in boiling water. Egg-based mixtures set gently; if the water is too hot or the cooking runs too long, the eggs can curdle and turn the creams grainy and rubbery instead of smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, sauce, butter, egg, cream, cucumber):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, sauce, butter, egg, cream, cucumber. 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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