Skip to main content

Fowls with Tarragon

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fowls with Tarragon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop half of the tarragon leaves finely with the livers of the fowls.

  2. Mix with butter, salt, and whole pepper.

  3. Stuff the fowls with the mixture.

  4. Lard the fowls and wrap them in buttered or oiled paper.

  5. Melt ¼ cup butter with 2 tablespoons flour, then stir in the remaining tarragon.

  6. Moisten with a little water or milk.

  7. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and lemon juice to make gravy.

  8. Serve the fowls garnished with fresh tarragon sprigs.

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. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, pepper, flour, milk, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, pepper, flour, milk, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes