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Roast Fowl

A roasted fowl stuffed with forcemeat, coated in butter and breadcrumbs, served with lemon sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and crumb

  1. Fill the breast of the fowl with forcemeat.

  2. Roast the fowl until nearly ready to serve.

  3. Remove the fowl from the fire and pour lukewarm butter over it.

  4. Strew the fowl thickly with bread crumbs and sprinkle with more butter.

  5. Dip the fowl into additional crumbs.

  6. Return the fowl to the fire until it is a clear, light brown all over.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the fowl from the spit, place it on a dish, and serve with lemon sauce and thickened gravy mixed with minced parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Fowl
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked through by roasting over direct heat.
Forcemeat
Fills the breast, adding moisture and flavour as it cooks inside the bird.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the bread crumbs brown evenly.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during the final return to the fire.
Gravy
Thickened with flour or similar, it adds body and savoury moisture to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Returning the fowl to the fire for the crumb crust. Crumbs and butter brown by dry heat, but too long or too hot can scorch them before the bird is cooked through. Watch the colour closely until it is a clear, light brown.

“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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