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Poulet a LA Marseilles

A French chicken stew with vegetables, stock, and brown roux, simmered slowly and garnished with vegetable stars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Build the base

  1. Heat the butter or dripping in a clean enamelled iron stewpan until it oils.

  2. Add the giblets, onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, mace, carrot, turnip, celery (or celery salt), and sugar.

  3. Fry the mixture for 10-12 minutes.

  4. Pour in the stock and bring gently to a boil.

  5. Reduce the heat and simmer gently, ensuring the stock does not reduce.

Make the stock

  1. Prepare turnip and carrot cut into tiny stars, tie them in muslin, and cook them in the stock.

  2. Strain the stock into a well-greased bag.

  3. Add pepper and salt to taste.

Poach and serve the fillets

  1. Add the fowl fillets and simmer slowly for about 45 minutes at 300 °F (150 °C).

  2. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with vegetable stars.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the cooking liquor with brown roux or the flour and butter mixture.

  2. Add the cooked mushrooms.

  3. Heat thoroughly and pour over the fillets.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers slowly in the stock.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat and rich flavor, and helps the aromatics soften and release their taste when fried.
Stock
Supplies the cooking liquid that moistens the fillets and carries the flavor of the dish.
Brown roux
Thickens the cooking liquor into a sauce and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft, meaty texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without letting the stock reduce. Vigorous boiling toughens the fowl proteins and drives off liquid, concentrating and over-salting the stock. A gentle simmer keeps the fillets tender and the sauce at the right volume.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, mace, carrot, turnip, celery, sugar):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, mace, carrot, turnip, celery, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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