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Boiled Fowl

A boiled fowl stuffed with oysters, served with a white sauce made from the cooking liquid, egg, cream, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill the inside of the young fowl with oysters.

  2. Place the fowl in a jar and submerge it in a kettle of water.

Boil

  1. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make a white sauce with the gravy from the jar, adding egg, cream, or a little flour and butter.

  2. Add oysters to the sauce or serve plain with the fowl.

  3. Garnish with parsley if desired.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Young fowl
Provides the meat, which cooks through slowly in the simmering water.
Oysters
Add a briny flavor and aroma to the stuffing and sauce.
Egg
Thickens the sauce and adds richness when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the white sauce. Egg proteins set at high heat, so if the sauce is too hot or the egg is added directly, it can curdle or scramble. Warming the egg with a little hot liquid first and adding it off the heat keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, cream, flour, butter. 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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