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Cold Fowl

A fricassee made from cold boiled or roasted fowl, almond, spices, and a cream or egg yolk gravy served with sippets and curled bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cold Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Cut up the cold fowl.

  2. Place it in a saucepan with the almond, mace, lemon peel, white pepper, and salt. Cover with warm water or broth and cover the saucepan.

  3. Simmer near the fire for 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken some gravy with flour and butter, and add cream or egg yolk. Do not let the gravy boil after adding cream or egg yolk.

  2. Heat the gravy, pour it over the meat, and serve with sippets and curled bacon.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, carrying flavour.
Cream or egg yolk
Enriches the gravy and gives it a smoother, silkier body.
Bitter almond
Adds a subtle nutty, aromatic flavour to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the gravy from boiling after adding cream or egg yolk. Egg yolk proteins and dairy can curdle or turn grainy when overheated, so the gravy should be heated gently and kept below a boil to stay smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, mace, lemon, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, mace, lemon, flour, butter, cream. 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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