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Modern Cookery

A stuffed bird cooked with forcemeat, bacon, herbs, and veal broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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's legs and wings with forcemeat and other ingredients for flavor.

  2. Sew up and truss the bird as usual.

  3. Draw the legs and wings inside the body.

  4. Flatten the bird.

  5. Cover with sausage meat and other ingredients.

  6. Roll tightly.

  7. Bind with tape.

  8. Wrap in pudding cloth.

  9. Tie at both ends.

Stew and set

  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.

  6. Let cool in the cooking liquid.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Liver + carrottop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together321 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
Fills the legs, wings and body, giving the cooked bird a rich, moist, savoury stuffing.
Bacon
Thin slices add fat that bastes the bird and adds savoury flavour as it cooks.
Veal broth
Forms the stewing liquid that gently cooks the bird and later reduces to a jelly-like gravy.
Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the cooking liquid, rounding out the gravy.
Bird
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes.. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the rolled meat tender and prevents it from toughening or falling apart. Long, low cooking also draws collagen from the bones and connective tissue into the liquid, which is what lets the gravy reduce to a jelly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, carrot, 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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