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Teal, Stewed

A stew of teal birds with hearts, livers, gizzards, and a sauce of claret, lemon, and brown thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Teal, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck the teal birds.

  2. Singe the teal birds.

  3. Empty the teal birds.

  4. Truss the teal birds securely.

  5. Preserve the hearts, livers, and gizzards.

  6. Dredge the teal with flour.

  7. Brown the teal in a saucepan with butter.

  8. Let the birds cool.

  9. Carve the birds into wings, legs, and breast portions.

  10. Break the bodies into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the bodies with the livers, hearts, and gizzards in enough water or stock to cover.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and cayenne.

  4. Thicken the mixture with brown thickening.

  5. Add claret and lemon juice to the mixture.

  6. Add the fleshy portions of the birds to the boiling mixture.

  7. Simmer the mixture without boiling.

Serve

  1. Fry slices of stale bread until lightly browned.

  2. Drain the fried bread.

  3. Arrange the fried bread on a hot dish.

  4. Place a leg and a wing on each piece of bread.

  5. Pour the sauce over the bread and bird portions.

  6. Garnish with parsley.

  7. Garnish with lemon slices.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Teal birds
Provide the meat that is carved, stewed and served as the main dish.
Flour
Coats the birds so they brown and help thicken the surrounding sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the birds and a rich flavour to the dish.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that brightens the rich sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the bird portions and bread.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture without boiling. Once the fleshy portions are added, a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and prevents the sauce from becoming cloudy or tough.

“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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