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Potted Fowl

A stew of shredded cold roasted or boiled fowl simmered in a seasoned broth and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potted Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all the meat from the cold roasted or boiled fowl using a fork and place it in a stew pan.

  2. In another pan, combine the bones, water, seasoning, parsley, and onion (if using).

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the liquid until it is reduced by half.

  2. Strain the liquid and add it to the meat.

  3. Mix a little flour and butter together.

  4. Add the mixture to the meat along with salt and sugar.

  5. Boil for 2 minutes.

  6. If the mixture is too thick, add more water or thin broth.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 meat that forms the body of the potted dish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the mixture sets into a spreadable texture.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that thickens and adds richness.
Water
Extracts flavour from the bones and forms the base of the liquid.

The step that matters

Reducing the bone broth by half. Simmering concentrates the flavour of the bones and water, so the finished mixture tastes rich rather than watery.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, flour, butter, sugar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, flour, butter, sugar. 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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