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Fowl, Salmi of

A stew of fowl pieces simmered with gravy, shallot, mace, cayenne, port, lemon, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl, Salmi of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Skin and remove fat from the fowl pieces.

  2. Boil the fowl pieces with the trimmings and crushed bones to make gravy.

  3. Add the sliced shallot, mace, cayenne, port or claret, and lemon juice to the gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

Finish the stew

  1. Place the fowl pieces in a clean stewpan and pour the gravy over them.

  2. Heat thoroughly without boiling.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Wild fowl or poultry
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers in the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Port or claret
Adds acidity and fruity depth to the gravy.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly without boiling. Boiling a thickened gravy with meat can make the flour-thickened sauce break or turn grainy and can toughen the proteins in the fowl. Gentle heating keeps the sauce smooth and the meat tender.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, pepper, lemon, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, pepper, lemon, flour. 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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