Skip to main content
Main

Fowl, with Onions

A fowl stewed with butter, white broth, pepper, sea salt, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fowl, with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck, draw, singe, and wash the fowl, then truss it as if for boiling.

  2. Rub a saucepan with butter and place the fowl inside with the white broth.

  3. Smear the fowl with more butter.

  4. Season the fowl with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew

  1. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the small onions.

  3. Continue to stew for another 30 minutes.

  4. Turn the fowl three or four times during cooking.

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

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 through gentle, slow stewing.
White broth
Supplies moisture that keeps the fowl from drying out while it stews.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the fowl's skin brown and enrich the dish.
Small onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 minutes. Keeping the heat low and the liquid barely simmering lets the connective tissue in the fowl break down slowly, so the meat stays tender instead of tough and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes