Skip to main content
Main

Smothered Poultry Fricassee

A smothered poultry fricassee made with veal or pork, eggs, spices, herbs, onion, carrot, turnip, fat pork, liver, mushrooms, and broth.

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

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Smothered Poultry Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove bones from the meat.

  2. Place the bones in cold water with sweet herbs, onion, carrot, and turnip.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Add salt.

  5. Skim carefully.

Stuff and roll the fowl

  1. Lay the fowl flat.

  2. Spread a layer of force-meat.

  3. Add strips of fat pork, liver, and mushrooms.

  4. Sew the edges of the fowl together tightly.

  5. Roll it up in a towel.

  6. Tie the ends securely.

Cook and press

  1. Boil in the prepared broth.

  2. Add enough water to cover.

  3. Cook for 1 hour per pound.

  4. Remove from the towel.

  5. Wipe off.

  6. Wrap in a clean towel.

  7. Place on a platter with a weight on top.

  8. Use the remaining broth for soup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or lean fresh pork
Forms the force-meat, giving the stuffing a firm, savory body.
Whole egg
Binds the chopped meat so the force-meat holds together when sliced.
Fat pork
Adds moisture and richness as it renders into the surrounding meat.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy flavor and moisture to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Skim carefully. Skimming removes foam and coagulated impurities from the simmering broth, keeping it clear and clean-tasting. Letting the broth boil hard can also emulsify fat into it and cloud it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, pork):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, pork. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes