Skip to main content
Main

Fowl, Ragout of

A stew of fowl pieces, ham or bacon, onion, butter, flour, and stock, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fowl, Ragout of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the fowl pieces until nicely browned, then remove and keep warm.

  3. Fry the onion until slightly softened.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and cook slowly until well browned.

  5. Add the stock and stir until boiling, then season with salt and pepper.

Braise and serve

  1. Return the fowl to the pan, add the ham or bacon, and cover closely.

  2. Cook gently for 1 to 1½ hours, or until the fowl is tender.

  3. Serve with the sauce strained over.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fowl
Its meat becomes tender and flavourful during the long, gentle braise.
Flour
Cooked in the butter until browned, it thickens the stock into a rich sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying and adds rich flavour to the browned base of the sauce.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour that seasons the sauce and meat during cooking.
Onion
Softened in the fat, it adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives the braise its body.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour slowly in the fat until well browned toasts it and removes raw starch taste, giving the sauce deeper colour and flavour before the stock is added and lumps can form if rushed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, flour, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes