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A Fowl or Turkey Roasted with Chestnuts

A fowl or turkey roasted with chestnuts, liver, ham, herbs, and a wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

A Fowl or Turkey Roasted with Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Roast 25 chestnuts and peel them, saving 8 to 10 for later.

  2. Bruise the remaining chestnuts in a mortar with the fowl's liver, pounded ham, chopped sweet herbs, and parsley. Season the mixture with mace, nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Stuff and spit the fowl

  1. Stuff the mixture into the fowl's belly, then spit it and tie the neck and vent closed.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cut the reserved chestnuts into pieces and add them to a strong gravy with white wine.

  2. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fowl and garnish with orange and watercress.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Chestnut + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a sweet, nutty flavour to the stuffing and sauce.
Fowl liver
Adds richness and a deeper, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Ham
Contributes salty, savoury meatiness to the stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, brightening the rich gravy.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style paste that thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth body.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully incorporated into the butter and cooked into the hot gravy, or the sauce can stay floury or form lumps. Simmering briefly lets the starch swell and thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, liver, ham, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, liver, ham, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, white wine. 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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