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Sauce to Broiled Fowl

A savory sauce made with onions, butter, flour, fowl parts, pickled mushrooms, and seasonings, served with broiled fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sauce to Broiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until soft.

  2. Add the flour to the onions.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the boiling liquid from the fowl.

  4. Stir until smooth.

  5. Remove the onions from the sauce.

Season and add the offal

  1. Season the sauce with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Add the fowl's comb and wattles to the sauce.

  3. Add the kidneys, liver, gizzard and brains to the sauce.

  4. Add the pickled mushrooms and pickled mushroom vinegar to the sauce.

Keep warm

  1. Keep the sauce hot in a bain-marie until ready to 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onions and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in butter.
Kidneys
Add rich, meaty body to the sauce as they cook in it.
Liver
Adds a deep, rich flavour and a softer texture to the sauce.
Pickled mushroom vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the onions and liquid until smooth. Flour must be cooked and fully dispersed in the liquid to thicken evenly; lumps form if the liquid is added too fast or unstirred, and the sauce stays gritty.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, pepper, liver, mushroom, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, pepper, liver, mushroom, vinegar. 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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