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Fowl with Truffles

A fowl stuffed with truffles, carrot, mace, pepper, and salt, simmered with lemon, bay leaf, cloves, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Bone and skin the fowl.

  2. Stuff the fowl with the odd bits, truffles, carrot, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Tie the fowl lightly.

  4. Place the fowl on slices of fat bacon.

  5. Top with sliced lemon after removing the rind.

Stew and finish

  1. In a casserole, combine bay leaf, cloves, carrot, onion, and enough water to cover the fowl.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Add embers over the pan.

  4. Strain the liquid.

  5. Add strong gravy and sliced truffles.

  6. Continue to stew gently for 45 minutes.

  7. Serve together.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide a strong earthy aroma that perfumes the broth and meat.
Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that bastes the bird and enriches the surrounding liquid.
Strong gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 2 hours. Gentle, low heat lets connective tissue break down into tender meat without boiling it dry or toughening the proteins. A vigorous boil tightens muscle fibres and makes the bird stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, carrot, pepper, lemon, clove, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, carrot, pepper, lemon, clove, onion. 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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