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Fowl with Olives

A fowl cooked with olives, a thin Spanish sauce, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fowl with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Singe and prepare the fowl.

  2. Blanch the olives until they are no longer briny.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the olives in the thin Spanish sauce.

  2. Skim the sauce, add lemon juice, and pour it under the fowl.

  3. Serve with stuffed olives, removing the stones to keep the olives whole.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Main protein that cooks to firm, tender meat.
Olives
Supply the main briny, savory flavor of the dish.
Thin spanish sauce
Liquid base that gives the dish its body and savory flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Blanch the olives until they are no longer briny. Blanching draws out excess salt and bitterness from the olives. Under-blanching leaves them too salty once they simmer in the sauce, which concentrates their flavor as it reduces.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, sauce. 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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