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A Nice Way to Dress a Fowl for a Small Dish

A young fowl stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, ham, bacon, and herbs, then stewed and finished with cream and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing veal, ham, bacon, egg yolks, herbs, suet, lemon peel, anchovy, salt, pepper, cayenne, breadcrumbs, and egg whites in a mortar.

  2. Stuff the forcemeat inside the fowl, tucking in the legs and wings, and tie the neck and rump closed.

Cook and finish

  1. Stew the fowl in white gravy until tender.

  2. Once cooked, add cream, butter, and flour, and bring to a boil.

  3. Finish by squeezing lemon juice over the dish before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Veal + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Young fowl
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Veal
Adds body and a soft, tender texture to the forcemeat stuffing.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb moisture so the stuffing holds together.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat with their proteins, which set when heated and hold it together.
Cream
Enriches the gravy, giving it a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Stewing the fowl in white gravy until tender. Stewing gently keeps the meat moist and lets the stuffing cook through. Boiling hard can toughen the proteins and make the meat stringy.

“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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