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Pot Roast Fowl

A pot roast made by browning a whole fowl, then slow cooking it with onions, carrot, allspice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pot Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the fowl with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and flour.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat hot fat in a deep kettle and brown the fowl all over.

  2. Add enough hot water to cover the fowl.

  3. Add sliced onions, carrot, and allspice to the kettle.

  4. Cover tightly and cook slowly for 4 to 5 hours.

Serve

  1. Strain the gravy or serve with vegetables.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

Flour
Coats the skin, helping it brown and giving the gravy body as it cooks.
Hot fat
Conducts heat to the skin during browning, creating color and savory flavor.
Onions
Release sugars and moisture into the liquid, sweetening and flavoring the gravy.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the cooking liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Brown the fowl all over. Browning builds color and flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pat the surface dry and use hot fat so the skin sears rather than steams, otherwise the gravy tastes flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, carrot, allspice):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, carrot, allspice. 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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