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To Stew Birds

A stew of birds cooked with bread crumbs, butter, bacon, and optional onions, herbs, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Stew Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the birds, stuff them with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, butter, and chopped salt pork, then fasten them tightly.

Stew

  1. Line a stew pan with slices of bacon, add 4 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of butter or 4 slices of salt pork.

  2. Add sliced onions, sweet herbs, and mace if desired.

  3. Stew until tender, then remove the birds and strain the gravy over them.

  4. Add boiling water if the liquid is too reduced.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and add body to the stuffing inside the birds.
Bacon
Lines the pan and flavors the stewing liquid with savory fat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and the stewing liquid.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and seasoning to the stuffing and the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until tender, then remove the birds and strain the gravy over them.. Slow simmering in liquid breaks down connective tissue so the meat becomes tender. Keeping the liquid below a vigorous boil prevents the meat from toughening and drying out.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, butter, mace):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, mace. 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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