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Modern Cookery

A whole bird stuffed with forcemeat, bacon, herbs, and vegetables, then braised and reduced to a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Fill the bird with forcemeat and bacon, then sew it up and truss as usual.

  2. Draw the legs and wings inside the body and flatten the bird.

  3. Cover with sausage meat and other ingredients evenly.

  4. Roll tightly and bind with a broad tape.

  5. Wrap in a thin pudding cloth and tie at both ends.

Stew

  1. Place in a braising pan or thick iron saucepan.

  2. Add chicken bones, sweet herbs, carrots, bay leaves, mace, peppercorns, and veal trimmings.

  3. Cover with veal broth.

  4. Add salt if needed.

  5. Stew gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Finish

  1. Let cool in the cooking liquid.

  2. Remove the bird.

  3. Boil down the gravy to a jelly.

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. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  3. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,338 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Forcemeat
Forms the savoury stuffing that fills the bird and gives a moist, firm filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the meat during the slow stew.
Veal broth
Provides the cooking liquid whose gelatin sets into a jelly-like gravy as it reduces.
Chicken bones
Release gelatin and body into the stock, enriching the gravy.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a rapid boil keeps the meat tender and prevents the bird from breaking apart or toughening through over-agitated, overly high heat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, carrot, chicken, veal):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, carrot, chicken, veal. 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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