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To Dress Moor-Fowl, with Red-Cabbage

A stew of moor-fowl simmered with red cabbage, butter, flour, and optional port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Moor-Fowl, with Red-Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Truss the moor-fowl as for boiling.

  2. In a pot, add the moor-fowl and soup, then let them stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Cut the red cabbage into quarters and add it to the pot.

  4. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and a butter-flour mixture.

  5. If desired, add port wine.

Serve

  1. Remove the cabbage and place it neatly on a serving dish.

  2. Place the moor-fowl on top of the cabbage, pour the sauce over, and garnish with small slices of bacon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,167 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cabbage + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Moor-fowl
Forms the main meat of the dish, becoming tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Soup
Provides the liquid that cooks the bird and forms the base of the sauce.
Red cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness to the dish, softening as it simmers.
Butter-flour mixture
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce and adds richness.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture. Flour must be cooked into the hot liquid and blended smoothly, or it forms lumps and leaves a raw, pasty taste. Adding it in fat first helps it disperse and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, flour, port wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, 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.

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