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Fowl, Stewed with Mushrooms

Stewed fowl with mushrooms in a white pepper and mace gravy thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fowl, Stewed with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

  1. Stew the fowl in strong gravy or mutton broth with white pepper, onion, and mace.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the button mushrooms and cook until tender.

  2. Serve with mushroom sauce or white fricassee of mushrooms around the fowl.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

White fowl
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Strong gravy or mutton broth
Supplies the cooking liquid that flavours and moistens the fowl as it stews.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux-style paste that thickens the gravy and gives it body and a silky texture.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soft texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully incorporated into the hot liquid, or it forms lumps and leaves a raw starchy taste. Rolling it in butter first coats the flour particles so they disperse smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, mace, butter, flour, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, mace, butter, flour, mushroom. 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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