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Legs and Wings of Fowls with Parsley

A stuffed fowl dish featuring legs and wings filled with parsley and forcemeat, baked and served with a mushroom and ham sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Legs and Wings of Fowls with Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Cut the legs and wings off the fowl, including the meat from each side of the breast.

  2. Bone the legs.

  3. Stuff the legs with light forcemeat mixed with boiled parsley.

  4. Sew the legs up.

  5. Dip the legs in egg white.

  6. Roll the legs in bread crumbs.

  7. Place each leg and wing in a paper case.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C).

  2. For the sauce, combine mushrooms, chopped ham, cullis, and white wine.

  3. Reduce the sauce until almost a glaze.

Serve

  1. Serve the fowl with the sauce and garnish with fried parsley.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the fowl and crisps during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating on the fowl as it bakes.
Light forcemeat
Adds a soft, moist stuffing that fills the boned legs as they cook.
Cullis
Provides the sauce base that is reduced into a concentrated, glossy glaze.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury flavour and moisture to the sauce.
Lean ham
Adds salty, savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce until almost a glaze. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid through evaporation. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing can make it salty and sticky, so the sauce should be watched closely as it thickens.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, mushroom, ham, sauce, white wine):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, mushroom, ham, sauce, white wine. 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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