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Fricassee of Fowl

A stew of fowl cooked with onion, parsley, butter, flour, ham, mushrooms, and cream, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Place the fowl in a jar with sliced onion, parsley, salt, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Cook in a kettle of water until three-quarters done, then skim and strain the liquid.

  3. Wipe the fowl dry and place it in a stewpan with butter and ham.

Make the sauce

  1. Add flour and shake until it is a good color.

  2. Moisten with the reserved liquid, adding parsley, young onions, bay leaf, clove, sorrel, and mushrooms.

  3. Skim and let it stew until done, then remove the herbs.

  4. Thicken the sauce with cream, avoiding boiling, and finish with lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fowl 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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
Provides the main protein and body of the dish, cooked gently until tender.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps it brown lightly when shaken in butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor while the fowl and flour cook.
Cream
Enriches and smooths the sauce, giving it a rounder, silkier texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the sauce as it stews.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with cream, avoiding boiling. Cream can curdle or separate when it boils, so it should be stirred in and kept at a gentle heat to stay smooth and glossy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, butter, flour, ham, mushroom, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, butter, flour, ham, mushroom, cream. 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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