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Boiled Fowl

A whole fowl boiled with lemon, butter, flour, milk, water, salt, and mace, served with ham, bacon, pickled pork, or tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fowl for cooking.

  2. Place slices of lemon on the breast and cover with buttered paper to keep the flesh white.

  3. Tie the fowl in a buttered and floured cloth.

Cook

  1. Place the fowl in boiling water and simmer gently for about 1 hour.

  2. For a nicer result, place the fowl in a large stone jar with a lid.

  3. Pour in milk and water or stock, add salt and mace, then seal the jar.

  4. Put the jar in a saucepan with enough cold water to reach nearly to the neck of the jar.

  5. Bring slowly to a boil and simmer for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Use the stock for broth, gravy, or sauce.

  2. Serve with boiled ham, bacon, pickled pork, or tongue, along with a sauce of your choice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Milk
Adds moisture and a mild, creamy richness to the gently cooked meat and stock.
Butter
Greases the cloth and paper, adding richness and helping the surface stay moist.
Flour
Dusts the cloth so it lightly coats the bird and helps form a protective layer.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boil hard. Vigorous boiling toughens the proteins in chicken and makes the flesh dry and stringy. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it tender and moist.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, butter, flour, milk. 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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