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Ragout of Fowl

A stew of cold roast fowl, ham, herbs, and stock, finished with lemon juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Ragout of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the fowls into neat pieces, as for a fricassee.

  2. Put the trimmings into a stewpan with the shalots, mace, herbs, ham, onion, and stock (water may be substituted).

  3. Boil slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. Put a small piece of butter into a stewpan; when melted, dredge in sufficient flour to dry up the butter, and stir it over the fire.

  2. Put in the strained liquor, boil for a few minutes, and strain it again over the pieces of fowl.

  3. Squeeze in the lemon juice, add the sugar and a seasoning of pepper and salt, make it hot but do not allow it to boil.

Serve

  1. Lay the fowl neatly on the dish, and garnish with croûtons.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

898Calories
42 gProtein
27 gFat
119 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Pork100g cooked242
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce that coats the fowl.
Butter
Forms the base roux with flour, carrying flavour and richness into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Stock
Provides the liquid body and savoury flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Make it hot but do not allow it to boil. Boiling a sauce thickened with flour and containing lemon juice can cause it to break, thin, or turn grainy, and can toughen the fowl.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, lemon, sugar, butter, onion, flour, pepper. 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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