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Fricassee of Fowl

A stew of parboiled fowl cooked with butter, flour, herbs, ham, mushrooms, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 234 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fricassee of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the fowl

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

  2. Put the jar in a saucepan and parboil the fowl until three-quarters done.

  3. Remove the fowl from the jar and drain it, then dry the fowl with a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and skim it.

  2. Place the strained liquid in a stewpan with ham, butter, and flour.

  3. Add mushrooms, parsley, spring onions, sorrel, bay leaf, clove, and seasoning.

  4. Let it stew, skimming occasionally, until done.

  5. Remove the herbs.

  6. Thicken the sauce with cream.

  7. Squeeze in lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fowl when 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 + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + sorreltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sorrel + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which is gently parboiled so it stays tender through the final stew.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps bind the sauce.
Cream
Makes the sauce smooth and rich, and softens its sharpness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savour and body to the stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with cream. Cream added to a boiling sauce can curdle or split, and lemon juice is also acidic. Keeping the sauce at a gentle simmer and adding the cream off the boil helps it stay smooth and cohesive.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, ham, mushroom, sorrel, clove. 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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