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Foul a LA Daube, Ornamented and Garnished with Aspic

Braised whole fowl filled with farce, covered with bacon, served with aspic garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Foul a LA Daube, Ornamented and Garnished with Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and decorate the fowl

  1. Fill the boned fowl with farce and lay it in a stewpan with fat from ham or bacon and stock.

  2. Cover the fowl with bacon and paper, and cook gently for 2 hours.

  3. Let the fowl cool in the liquor and fat.

  4. Once cool, decorate with colored fat and chopped aspic around the edge and on top.

Make the aspic

  1. For the aspic, layer the bottom of a soup pot with lean ham, veal, old fowl bones, giblets, and any trimmings.

  2. Add onions, thyme, parsley, mace, and celery, then pour in 4 quarts of second stock.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a slow simmer for 4-5 hours without skimming.

  4. Strain the stock and let it sit overnight to separate the fat.

Prepare the flavored fat

  1. In a stewpan, heat 1 pint of the fat with ½ pound of small-cut lean ham, shallots, garlic, tarragon, and bay leaves.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, holding the farce and carrying the cooking juices.
Fat from ham or bacon
Adds richness and moisture while the fowl cooks gently and later sets around the meat.
Knuckle of veal
Its connective tissue releases gelatin into the stock, helping the aspic set.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory aromatic base for the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic vegetable flavor to the stock used for the aspic.

The step that matters

Let the fowl cool in the liquor and fat. Cooling in its own liquid keeps the meat moist and lets the stock and fat set around the fowl. A well-set layer is what keeps the decoration in place.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, onion, thyme, parsley, celery, shallot):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, onion, thyme, parsley, celery, shallot. 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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