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Braised Fowl

A braised fowl cooked with pork fat, onion, carrot, parsley, bay leaf, and water, finished with a flour-thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Fowl

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Stuff and truss the fowl.

  2. Render the fat from the pork in a pan and remove scraps.

  3. Sauté the fowl in the pork fat until browned on all sides, turning frequently.

  4. Transfer the fowl to a trivet in a deep pan.

Braise

  1. In the same pan, cook the onion, carrot, parsley, and bay leaf in the remaining fat for 3 minutes.

  2. Add 2 cups of boiling water to the pan.

  3. Cover and bake at 300°F (150°C) until tender.

  4. Baste every 20 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the stock from the pan.

  2. Remove the fat.

  3. Thicken with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed with cold water to form a smooth paste.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist cooking.
Fat salt pork
Its rendered fat browns the fowl and adds rich flavour to the braising liquid.
Flour
Thickens the strained stock into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the braising liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour paste. Mixing flour with cold water first creates a smooth paste that disperses evenly. Adding dry flour directly to hot stock forms lumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, parsley, flour):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, parsley, flour. 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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