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Boiled Fowl and Bice

A boiled fowl served with rice, onions, mace, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl and Bice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling.

  2. Place it in a stewpan and cover with mutton broth.

  3. Add the onions, mace, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stew gently for about 1 hour for a large fowl.

Cook the rice

  1. One hour before it's done, add the well-washed and soaked rice.

  2. Strain the rice.

  3. Let it dry on a sieve before the fire.

  4. Keep the fowl hot while the rice dries.

Serve

  1. Dish the fowl.

  2. Arrange the rice around it as a border.

  3. Pour a little parsley and melted butter over the fowl.

  4. Serve the rest in a tureen.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle simmering in broth.
Rice
Forms the starchy side dish that absorbs flavour and sets into a firm border when drained and dried.
Mutton broth
Cooks the fowl and carries the flavour of the onions and mace into the meat and rice.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the parsley sauce poured over the fowl.

The step that matters

Adding the rice one hour before the end. Rice cooks quickly and can turn mushy if it stays in the simmering liquid too long. Timing it to finish with the fowl keeps the grains separate and firm enough to drain and shape.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, pepper, rice, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, rice, parsley, butter. 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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