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Fowl a LA Hollandaise

A stuffed fowl roasted with a batter crust, served with butter and lemon pickle or brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fowl a LA Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing grated bread, minced suet, onion (or oysters), boiled parsley, pepper, coarse sea salt, grated lemon peel, and 1 beaten egg.

  2. Bone the breast of a young fowl and fill it with the forcemeat.

Roast and batter

  1. Cover the fowl with a buttered piece of white paper and roast for 30 minutes.

  2. Prepare a thick batter by mixing flour, milk, and 2 eggs.

  3. Remove the paper and pour some batter over the fowl.

  4. When the batter dries, add more batter until fully crusted and golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter and lemon pickle or thickened brown gravy.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat and set the batter into a crust as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the batter that dries and sets into the golden crust on the fowl.
Milk
Loosens the flour into a pourable batter that browns as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping the stuffing moist and rich as it roasts.
Bread
Provides the body of the forcemeat, soaking up fat and moisture from the fowl.

The step that matters

Adding the batter in layers. Pouring batter onto a hot fowl only after the previous coat has dried lets each layer set and brown. Pouring too early can make the batter run off or cook into a soggy, pale layer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg, flour, milk):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg, flour, milk. 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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