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Fowls a LA Macedoine

A stew of fowls simmered in stock with mace, onion, carrot, celery, thyme, and macedoine vegetables, finished with port wine and roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fowls a LA Macedoine

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fowls

  1. In a stewpan, combine stock, mace, onion, carrot, celery, thyme, and seasoning.

  2. Prick the fowls all over the breast with a needle and add them to the stewpan.

  3. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 35 minutes.

  4. Remove the fowls and pour the gravy into another stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little roux and add port wine.

  2. Strain the sauce and stir in the macedoine vegetables.

Serve

  1. Place the fowls on a serving dish, glaze the breasts, and pour the sauce around them.

  2. Garnish with small heaps of Brussels sprouts and serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Fowls
Provide the main cooked meat, which becomes tender while simmering in the seasoned stock.
Roux
Thickens the gravy so it coats the fowls and vegetables rather than running thin.
Port wine
Adds depth and a little sweetness to the sauce.
Macedoine vegetables
Add colour and texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the fowls. Bringing the liquid to a boil and then holding it at a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the stock clear. A hard boil toughens the proteins and makes the gravy cloudy.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mace, onion, carrot, celery, thyme, port wine):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, onion, carrot, celery, thyme, port wine. 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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