Name: Stewed Fowl
Ingredients: 1 whole fowl; enough salt water to nearly cover the fowl; 1 slice of fat ham; 1 clove of garlic, minced; 1 teaspoon powdered pimento; a pinch of saffron; flour for thickening; butter for thickening

Why it works: Clove and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 455 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Place the fowl in a stewpan and add enough salt water to nearly cover it.
Add the slice of ham, minced garlic, powdered pimento, and saffron.

Cook and serve

Cook until the fowl is tender.
Remove the fowl and reduce the cooking liquid to a sauce.
Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then serve 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.

Clove + saffrontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together455 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Garlic + saffrontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Saffron + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together447 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

Fowl: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the liquid.
Fat ham: Adds fat and savory flavour to the cooking liquid, enriching the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the reduced cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter: Enriches the thickened sauce with fat, adding body and a rounder flavour.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, saffron, flour, butter):

Cardamomfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, saffron, flour, butter. 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.