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Boiled Fowl

A boiled fowl stuffed with oysters, finished with a cream and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,103 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Truss the young fowl as for boiling.

  2. Fill the inside of the fowl with oysters that have been cleaned and washed in their own liquor.

  3. Secure the ends of the fowl.

  4. Place the fowl in a jar.

Cook

  1. Submerge the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and keep it boiling for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Collect the gravy from the oysters and fowl.

  2. Stir the gravy in the cream and egg yolks.

  3. Add a few oysters scalded in their liquor.

  4. Heat the sauce without boiling.

  5. Pour some sauce over the fowl.

  6. Serve the remainder of the sauce in a tureen.

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. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks in the cream will curdle and turn grainy if they boil. Keeping the sauce just below boiling lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

“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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