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To Stew Birds

A stew of birds cooked with bread crumbs, salt, butter, and optional onions, herbs, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Stew Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Wash the birds.

  2. Stuff them with bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and chopped salt pork.

  3. Fasten them tightly.

Stew

  1. Line a stew pan with bacon slices.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. If desired, add sliced onions, sweet herbs, and mace.

  4. Stew the birds until tender.

  5. If the liquid is too reduced, add boiling water.

Serve

  1. Remove them and strain the gravy over them.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the seasoned fats and juices inside the birds, keeping the stuffing moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the stuffing and the gravy.
Chopped salt pork
Releases fat and salty flavour into the stuffing and the surrounding liquid as it cooks.
Bacon slices
Line the pan and add smoky, salty flavour and fat to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew the birds until tender. Stewing needs gentle, steady simmering rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle fibres and can break the birds apart, while low, slow heat breaks down connective tissue into tender meat. Keep the liquid covering the birds, adding boiling water if it reduces too far.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, butter, pork, mace):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, pork, mace. 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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