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Roast Fowl

A roasted fowl stuffed with forcemeat, coated in butter and breadcrumbs, served with lemon sauce and thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Fill the breast of the fowl with forcemeat.

  2. Roast the fowl until nearly done.

  3. Remove the fowl from the heat and pour lukewarm butter over it.

  4. Strew the fowl thickly with bread crumbs.

  5. Sprinkle more butter over the crumbs.

  6. Dip the fowl into additional crumbs.

  7. Optionally, mix chopped herbs, spices, and lemon zest with the crumbs.

Brown and serve

  1. Return the fowl to the heat until it is a clear, light brown all over.

  2. Carefully remove the fowl from the spit and dish it.

  3. Serve the fowl with lemon sauce and thickened gravy mixed with minced parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Fine fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole until tender and browned.
Forcemeat
Fills the breast, adding moisture and flavour as the bird cooks.
Lukewarm butter
Moistens the bread crumbs and encourages an even golden-brown crust.
Very fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the fowl.
Thickened gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Return the fowl to the heat until clear, light brown. Heat browns the butter-moistened crumbs, but overcooking dries the meat. The bird is already nearly done, so the final browning should be brief and watched closely.

“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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