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Chicken Fillets or Breasts, Epicurean

A refined dish of chicken fillets, truffles, foie gras, and velouté sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Fillets or Breasts, Epicurean

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Prepare the fillets of the chickens, removing skin and epidermis.

  2. Lard the fillets with fine larding pork.

  3. Place them in a buttered pan and cook in a very hot oven until colored.

  4. Drain and decorate with frills.

  5. Streak each fillet with thin slices of truffles, roll into rings, and poach in a buttered pan without coloring.

  6. Dress the large fillets on a forcemeat ring and decorate with the minion fillets.

Make the sauce

  1. Detach glaze from the pan with sherry wine, remove fat, and add velouté sauce.

  2. Thicken the sauce with diluted egg yolks, cream, and butter just before serving.

  3. Run the sauce through a sieve and pour over the fillets and minions, serving the rest in a sauce boat.

Make and serve the foie gras balls

  1. Make small balls with foie gras, dip in eggs, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in hot fat.

  2. Place one ball in the center of each minion fillet ring and serve immediately.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Pork + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

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

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the tender meat that forms the fillets and minions.
Truffles
Add an earthy, aromatic flavour that perfumes the rolled fillets and sauce.
Foie gras
Melts into a rich, fatty filling that adds luxurious texture and flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, glossy, velvety consistency.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the sauce and giving it a silky mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the foie gras balls when fried.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with diluted egg yolks, cream, and butter just before serving. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if the sauce boils, so keep it below a simmer and add them off the heat near serving.

“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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