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Modern Cookery

A whole bird stuffed with forcemeat, livers, tongue, bacon, herbs, and spices, then braised and served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bird

  1. Bone the bird and remove the neck bones and merrythought.

  2. Fill the bird with forcemeat, livers, tongue, sausage meat, or bacon for flavor.

  3. Sew up and truss the bird, or draw the legs and wings inside and flatten it.

  4. Cover the bird with sausage meat and other ingredients evenly.

  5. Roll tightly and bind with broad tape, then wrap in pudding cloth and tie at both ends.

Stew and finish

  1. Place in a braising pan or thick iron saucepan.

  2. Add chicken bones, sweet herbs, carrots, bay leaves, mace, peppercorns, and veal trimmings.

  3. Cover with veal broth and add salt if needed.

  4. Stew gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes.

  5. Let cool in the broth, then boil down the gravy.

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. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  4. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Forcemeat
Adds richness and a moist, savoury filling that keeps the bird juicy.
Livers
Add depth and a rich, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Thin slices of bacon
Add fat and smoky savour that bastes the bird as it cooks.
Veal broth
Provides gentle moist heat and a base for the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently and let cool in the broth. Gentle, low simmering keeps the meat tender and prevents the wrapped bird from toughening or falling apart. Cooling it slowly in the broth lets it reabsorb moisture so it stays juicy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, liver, carrot, veal):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, liver, carrot, veal. 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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