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Fowl with Spinach

A baked dish of parboiled fowl, rice, eggs, butter, flour, cream, and gravy, served with spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fowl with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice until tender, then mix it with the butter while warm.

  2. Beat the eggs and gradually mix them into the rice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a deep dish and line it with the rice mixture.

  2. Place the parboiled fowl pieces on top, adding a little seasoned liquor.

  3. Add butter, flour, and cream to the dish.

  4. Cover with the remaining rice and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until brown.

Serve

  1. Poach the eggs in gravy and serve them on flattened balls of spinach around the fowl.

  2. Pour the thickened gravy over the fowl and serve hot.

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. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Rice + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the rice mixture together and help it set firmly as it bakes.
Rice
Forms the bed and crust that holds the fowl and absorbs the butter.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce.
Fowl
Provides the main protein; slow moist cooking keeps the meat tender.

The step that matters

Covering and baking the rice layers. The eggs in the rice must set during baking to hold the dish together; too hot an oven can brown the top before the inside firms, so watch the colour closely.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, egg, flour, cream, sauce, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, egg, flour, cream, sauce, pepper. 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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