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Fowl Fricassee

A stew of fowl pieces simmered in a sauce of flour, butter, and aromatics, served with salt pork or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. If the fowl is old, skin it first.

  2. Put the fowl pieces into warm water and stew for 1 hour, skimming well.

  3. Add the chopped onion, carrot, and cloves to the pot.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stir the flour and butter together over heat until smooth.

  2. Remove the fowl from the pot, strain the liquid, and gradually stir it into the flour and butter mixture.

  3. Once the sauce is smooth, season with cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon or lime juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the fowl to the sauce, add forcemeat balls and mushrooms, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve with slices of salt pork or bacon around the dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and, as it stews, the flavour base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Lemon or lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the strained stock into the roux. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour and butter blended, so the sauce stays smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, flour, butter, pepper, lemon, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, flour, butter, pepper, lemon, mushroom. 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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