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Fowl with Truffles

A fowl stuffed with truffles, bacon, lemon, and aromatics, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Bone and skin the fowl.

  2. Slice the truffles and carrot, then pound them with mace, pepper, and salt in a mortar.

  3. Stuff the fowl with the mixture and tie it tightly.

  4. Lay slices of fat bacon and lemon on top of the fowl.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the fowl in a stew-pan with a bay leaf, cloves, sliced carrot, onion, and enough water to cover it.

  2. Simmer very gently for two hours.

  3. Remove the fowl, strain the liquid, and return it to the stew-pan with strong gravy and sliced truffles.

  4. Stew gently until ready to serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Green truffles
Provide the main aroma and flavour of the dish, perfuming the stuffing and the gravy.
Young fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Strong gravy
Adds body and savoury richness to the liquid in which the fowl finishes cooking.
Fat bacon
Lies over the fowl and melts slowly, adding fat that keeps the meat moist.

The step that matters

Simmering very gently for two hours. At a fast boil the liquid turns cloudy and the meat toughens and breaks apart. A gentle simmer keeps the fowl tender and the broth clear.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, carrot, pepper, lemon, clove, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, carrot, pepper, lemon, clove, onion. 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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