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Braised Fowl

Braised fowl stuffed with a force‑meat mixture of bread crumbs, butter, herbs, and egg, cooked with stock and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Braised Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the fowl breast side down in a baking dish.

  3. Layer the cooked ham on top of the fowl.

  4. Mix the bread crumbs, butter or suet, parsley, sweet basil, lemon rind, nutmeg, egg, and milk to create a force‑meat.

  5. Stuff the force‑meat into the fowl, including the legs and wings to maintain their shape.

  6. Sew up the fowl and truss it as you would for roasting.

Braise and serve

  1. Add the stock and vegetables around the fowl in the baking dish.

  2. Cover and braise in the oven for 1 hour.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg to form a binding force-meat that holds the stuffing together.
Egg
Binds the force-meat so it holds its shape when stuffed and cooked.
Butter or suet
Adds fat to the force-meat, keeping the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Stock
Provides liquid for braising, keeping the fowl moist and building flavour in the dish.
Cooked ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour that seasons the fowl and stuffing as it braises.

The step that matters

Sew up and truss the fowl before braising. A tight, well-closed bird keeps the force-meat inside while it cooks. Loose stuffing can spill out and dry or unevenly cook the meat.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, bread, butter, parsley, lemon, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, bread, butter, parsley, lemon, nutmeg, 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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