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Hashed Fowl

A stew of pieces of fowl simmered in stock, thickened with flour and batter, served with poached eggs and garnished with parsley and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Hashed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat from a cold fowl into small pieces.

  2. In a stew pan, combine ½ pint of well‑flavored stock with a little salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Make the hash

  1. Thicken the mixture with flour and batter, then bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the pieces of fowl to the pan to warm them through.

  3. After stewing sufficiently, serve the hash with poached eggs on top.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with a sprig of parsley in the center and pieces of fried bread around the plate.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold fowl
Provides the main body of the hash, giving it meaty texture and substance.
Well-flavored stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the seasoning and moistens the fowl.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the hash clings to the meat instead of running off.
Batter
Adds further thickening to the sauce, giving it a fuller body.
Eggs
Poached on top, they add soft, rich yolk that enriches the dish.

The step that matters

Thicken before adding the fowl. Flour needs to be fully incorporated and brought to a boil to thicken properly and lose its raw starchy taste. Adding the meat to a thin, unset sauce leaves it watery and dull.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, nutmeg, flour, egg, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, nutmeg, flour, egg, bread. 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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