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Gravy for a Fowl 'when There is No Meat to Make It

A gravy made from fowl feet, neck, liver, gizzard, and other parts simmered with bread, onion, herbs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy for a Fowl 'when There is No Meat to Make It

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the feet of the fowl and cut them and the neck into small pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. Simmer the pieces with browned bread, onion, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, liver, gizzard, and water until reduced by half.

  2. Remove the liver, bruise it, and strain the liquid into it.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter, then add mushroom ketchup.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and helps the flour thicken the gravy smoothly.
Browned bread
Adds toasted flavour and body to the simmering liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with the butter and liquid so starch swells and the gravy thickens without lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, liver, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, liver, flour, butter. 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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