Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fowl

A boiled chicken dish seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and herbs, served with a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Divide the fowl at the back, lay the sides open, and skewer the wings as for roasting.

  2. Boil the fowl over a clear fire, seasoning with pepper, salt, and butter.

  3. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

Make the fricassee

  1. For the fricassee, joint the chickens and soak them in clear water for 30 minutes.

  2. Transfer the chickens to a stew-pan with the salt pork and barely cover with water.

  3. Simmer on the stove for 3 hours until tender.

  4. Remove the chicken and mix the flour smoothly with cold milk.

  5. Add the parsley, sage, thyme, and stir into the cooking liquid.

  6. Keep stirring until it boils, then season with pepper and salt.

  7. Return the chicken to the pot and let it boil briefly in the gravy.

  8. Garnish with the green tops of celery.

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 + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy when stirred and boiled.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the fowl as it boils.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold milk before adding it. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid forms lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse. Blending it smoothly with cold milk first lets it hydrate evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly once it boils while being stirred.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, chicken, pork, flour, milk, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, chicken, pork, flour, milk, parsley. 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.

More boiled chicken recipes

with Rice 7and Rice 6and Tongue 3Sauce for 3White 3 See all 162 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes