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Boned Fowl with Forcemeat

A boned fowl stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, ham, bacon, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs, stewed in white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Boned Fowl with Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Bone the fowl without breaking the skin.

  2. Make the forcemeat by mincing veal, ham, and bacon, then pound with egg yolks and breadcrumbs. Season the mixture with pepper and nutmeg.

Stuff and stew

  1. Fill the bird with the forcemeat and tie it up closely.

  2. Stew the fowl in white stock for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with a good white sauce and garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when stuffed and cooked.
Fine breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat body and a tender texture.
Veal
Provides the main minced meat base of the forcemeat stuffing.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the lean forcemeat moist and flavorful during stewing.

The step that matters

Tie the bird up closely after filling. Forcemeat expands and can leak out during stewing if the bird is loosely closed, so a snug tie keeps the stuffing contained and the bird's shape intact.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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