Skip to main content
Main

Fowl, with Macaroni

A dish of seasoned fowl pieces simmered in a savory gravy, served with macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fowl, with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Season the fowl pieces with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then dredge in browned flour.

  2. Fry the fowl lightly in oil or butter for about 10 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, combine the bones and trimmings with water or veal broth, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley, cloves, mustard, cheese, and salt.

  2. Simmer for at least 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

Cook the macaroni and serve

  1. In another stewpan, melt the butter and add the soaked macaroni.

  2. Pour the strained gravy over the macaroni and simmer until soft, about 1.5 hours.

  3. Arrange the fowl in the center of a dish and surround it with the macaroni.

  4. Add Marsala wine to the gravy, heat it, and pour over the fowl before serving.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which is browned and then cooked gently in the dish.
Macaroni
Absorbs the buttery gravy and becomes soft, forming the base around the fowl.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the macaroni and the frying step.
Browned flour
Coats the fowl so it browns during frying and helps thicken the surrounding sauce.
Marsala wine
Adds a sweet, fortified wine flavour to the gravy before it is poured over the fowl.

The step that matters

Simmering the macaroni in the gravy. Macaroni that is simmered too hard or left unattended can break apart or stick to the pan. Gentle simmering lets the pasta soften evenly while absorbing the gravy's liquid and flavour.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, veal, carrot, onion, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, veal, carrot, onion, garlic. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes