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Stewed Fowl

A stew of a whole fowl cooked with ham, garlic, pimento, saffron, and a flour‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 455 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

  1. Place the fowl in a stewpan and add enough water to nearly cover it.

  2. Add the ham, garlic, powdered pimento, and saffron.

  3. Cook until the fowl is tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the fowl and reduce the cooking liquid to a sauce.

  2. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then serve with the fowl.

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 + saffrontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + saffrontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Saffron + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce, helping it cling to the fowl.
Fat ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour needs to be cooked with fat and liquid so its starch swells and thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps. Adding it to liquid that is too hot or unevenly mixed can clump it.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, saffron, flour, butter):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, saffron, flour, butter. 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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