Skip to main content
Main

Ragouts of Poultry, Game, Pigeons, Rabbits, Etc.

A savory ragout made with poultry, game, pigeons, or rabbits simmered in broth with spices, then thickened with a butter‑flour roux and served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ragouts of Poultry, Game, Pigeons, Rabbits, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine broth or water with meat trimmings, onion, allspice, black pepper, and lemon peel in a stew-pan.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and let simmer gently for about 1 hour and 15 minutes for duck or fowl, longer for larger birds.

  3. Strain the liquid and keep the duck warm by the fire, skimming off the fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean stew-pan, melt butter, then stir in enough flour to form a stiff paste.

  2. Gradually add the strained liquid, bring to a boil, then add port wine and lemon juice, simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the duck in a serving dish and pour the sauce over it, garnishing with toasted or fried bread.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms a stiff paste with butter that thickens the liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Broth or water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the trimmings and aromatics.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Forming the flour and butter paste. If the flour is not cooked briefly in the melted butter, it can taste raw and may clump when the liquid is added. Stirring until smooth and then adding the liquid gradually helps the sauce thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, allspice, lemon, butter, flour, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, allspice, lemon, butter, flour, port wine. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes