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Pieds De Mouton Aux Concombres, En Fricassee De Poulets

A stew of sheep's trotters and cucumbers simmered in a butter and stock sauce thickened with flour and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pieds De Mouton Aux Concombres, En Fricassee De Poulets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the sheep's trotters in water until tender.

  2. Soak the diced cucumbers in vinegar and salt for 1 hour, then squeeze out excess liquid.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the trotters, cucumbers, butter, parsley, green onions, cloves, bay leaf, and garlic.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally.

  3. Mix flour with stock. Add the mixture to the stewpan and cook gently until the cucumbers are tender and the sauce thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks with cream. Stir the mixture into the stew, thickening over low heat.

  2. Season to taste and serve.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's trotters
Provide the meat and gelatin that give the stew its body and rich texture.
Cucumbers
Add tender body and a fresh, tart flavour once softened in the stew.
Vinegar
Sharpens the cucumbers' flavour during soaking and adds acidity to the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stew and carries aroma.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce when cooked through.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in gently over low heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk and cream. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble if the stew boils. Add the mixture off the boil or over low heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce becomes smooth and creamy rather than curdled.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, butter, parsley, onion, garlic, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, butter, parsley, onion, garlic, flour. 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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