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Stewed Birds

Stewed birds are cooked in hot water with butter, salt, and thickened with flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the birds thoroughly.

  2. Place the birds in a porcelain-lined stew pan.

Stew and thicken

  1. Add the hot water, salt, and butter.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until cooked through.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water to make a paste, then stir it into the stew to thicken.

  4. Season with pepper if desired.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Birds
The main ingredient; slow simmering in liquid makes the meat tender and flavorful.
Flour
Thickens the stew as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving a fuller body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder, mellow flavor to the stew.
Hot water
Forms the cooking liquid that gently braises the birds and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into a paste before stirring it in. Flour dropped in dry clumps and stays lumpy. Mixing it with a little cold water first separates the grains, so they disperse evenly and thicken the hot stew smoothly.

“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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