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A Raised Pie, with a Daubed Fowl in It

A pie filled with a whole fowl, bacon, onions, herbs, and stock, served with coulis.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

A Raised Pie, with a Daubed Fowl in It

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the fowl

  1. Prepare the fowl by filling it with good stuffing.

  2. In a stewpan, layer sheets of fat bacon, then add the bones and giblets.

  3. Add the onions, thyme, parsley, marjoram, bay leaves, and the fowl.

  4. Pour in 1 pint of stock and cover the fowl with fat bacon and paper.

  5. Simmer on low heat for 2 hours.

Assemble the pie

  1. Meanwhile, raise a pie and fill it with bran; clean out the bran after baking.

  2. Remove the fowl from the stewpan, strain the cooking liquid, and skim off the fat.

  3. Fill the pie with the fowl and the strained liquid, adding coulis to fill it up.

  4. Slice truffles and add them to the coulis, then bring to a boil and pour over the fowl.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the pie and gives the dish its meat and structure.
Sheets of fat bacon
Lines and covers the fowl, adding fat that moistens and flavours the meat during simmering.
Bones and giblets of the fowl
Release gelatin and flavour into the stock, giving the filling body and savour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as they soften.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that keeps the fowl moist and becomes the base of the filling.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after straining. Fat left in the cooking liquid makes the filling greasy and cloudy. Skimming it lets the liquid set cleanly and taste lighter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, parsley, marjoram, sauce, truffle):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, parsley, marjoram, sauce, truffle. 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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