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A Stewed Fowl

A stew of fowl cooked with butter, ham, parsley, onion, nutmeg, salt, pepper, white wine, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

A Stewed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the fowl

  1. Place the fowl in a stew pan with butter, ham, parsley, onion, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour in the white wine and add enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Let it stew slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Add small onions around the fowl with the ham.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, brush the fowl with yolk of egg.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the slow stew.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that season the cooking liquid.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory flavor to the stewing liquid and fowl.
Fowl
The main protein, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.

The step that matters

Stewing with added water. Enough liquid must be kept in the pot to prevent scorching, while the stew stays at a gentle simmer so the fowl turns tender rather than tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, white wine, rice):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, white wine, rice. 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.

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