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Fowl

A stew of fowl pieces simmered in a lemon-mace-herb gravy thickened with flour and finished with a cream-egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Divide the remains of the fowl into small joints.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy by stewing the trimmings and legs with lemon peel, mace, herbs, onion, seasoning, and water until reduced to ½ pint.

  2. Strain the gravy and add the fowl, warming it through.

  3. Thicken the gravy with 1 teaspoon of flour.

Finish with the cream

  1. Stir the egg yolks into the cream and heat until hot, but do not boil.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Remains of cold fowl
Supplies the main body of the dish, gently rewarmed in the gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewed gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the cream as their proteins set on gentle heating.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks into the cream and heat until hot, but do not boil.. Egg yolk proteins set when heated too far, so boiling would curdle the mixture into a grainy texture. Heating gently keeps it smooth and thickened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, onion, pepper, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, onion, pepper, flour, cream, egg. 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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