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Fowl with Its Own Gravy

A fowl is boiled with bacon, ham, parsley, lemon, herbs, cloves, onion, carrot, pepper, salt, stock, and white wine, then served with its gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fowl with Its Own Gravy

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

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

Make the dish

  1. Lard the fowl with bacon, ham, and parsley.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and add the fowl.

  3. Add lemon slices, sweet herbs, cloves, onion, carrot, pepper, salt, stock, and white wine.

  4. Stew gently until the fowl is cooked through.

Finish

  1. Skim and strain the sauce, then serve it with the fowl.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in the liquid.
Bacon
Larding fat melts slowly into the bird, adding richness and moisture to the meat.
Ham
Larding adds savory, salty flavor and fat that keeps the lean meat moist.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the bird begin to brown in the pan.
Stock
Liquid that gently cooks the fowl and becomes the base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce and balance the richness.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the fowl is cooked through. Gentle simmering cooks the bird evenly and keeps the meat tender; a hard boil toughens the proteins and can make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, parsley, butter, lemon, clove, carrot, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, butter, lemon, clove, carrot, pepper. 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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