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Boiled Fowl

A boiled fowl served with various sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fowl and remove any gills or feathers.

  2. Place the fowl in a pot and cover with water.

  3. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer.

  2. Cook a large fowl for 1 hour, a moderate-sized one for 45 minutes, or a chicken for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Once cooked, remove the fowl and let it rest for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with your choice of sauce poured over 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Celery + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and moist as it simmers in water.
Bechamel sauce or white sauce
Adds a smooth, creamy coating that gives richness and mild flavour to the fowl.

The step that matters

Simmering at a gentle heat. Once boiling, reducing the heat to a simmer keeps the meat tender. A hard, rolling boil toughens muscle fibres and can make the meat dry and stringy.

“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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