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Fowl a LA Mayonnaise

Cold roast fowl served with mayonnaise sauce, lettuces, watercress, endive, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fowl a LA Mayonnaise

5 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fowl into neat joints.

  2. Lay the joints in a deep dish, piling them high in the centre.

  3. Make mayonnaise according to recipe No. 468.

Assemble and serve

  1. Sauce the fowl with the mayonnaise.

  2. Do not pour the mayonnaise over the fowls until the moment of serving.

  3. Garnish the dish with young lettuces cut in halves, watercress, endive, and hard‑boiled eggs.

  4. Slice the hard‑boiled eggs into rings or lay them whole, cutting off at the bottom a piece of the white to make the egg stand.

  5. If a very large mayonnaise is required, use two fowls instead of one, with an equal proportion of the remaining ingredients.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

170Calories
11 gProtein
9 gFat
12 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Bacon1 slice cooked (8g)43
Lettuce1 cup shredded (36g)5

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. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Egg and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the cooked meat that the sauce coats.
Mayonnaise (in the method)
Adds richness and moisture, coating the fowl with a creamy emulsified sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add structure and visual contrast as a garnish, and their whites can be trimmed to stand upright.

The step that matters

Saucing the fowl at serving time. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can thin, weep or separate if left in contact with warm or wet meat for long, so pouring it on just before serving keeps the sauce thick and glossy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg. 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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