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Fowl Sauts with Peas

A sautéed dish of leftover roast fowl with peas, butter, flour, stock, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fowl Sauts with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the fowl into nice pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a skillet.

  3. Sauté the fowl until nicely browned, seasoning with pepper, salt, and pounded mace.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and shake the pan to mix well.

  5. Add the weak stock and green peas, then stir in the sugar.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Remains of cold roast fowl
Provides the main protein, which is browned in the butter for flavor and texture.
Butter
Fat for sautéing that browns the fowl and carries the seasoning.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices and stock into a light sauce as it cooks.
Green peas
Add sweetness, color, and a tender vegetable element to the dish.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the flour and shake the pan to mix well. Flour added to hot fat must be spread evenly so it cooks into the drippings without clumping; dispersing it before the stock goes in helps the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, flour, peas, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, peas, sugar. 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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