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 ↓
Boiled Fowl
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fowl
Draw the fowl, singe it, and wash it.
Cut off the legs at the first joint and the neck close to the body, leaving the neck skin.
Loosen the skin around the legs.
Push the legs inside.
Twist the wings onto the back.
Truss the fowl with a needle, drawing the skin down over the legs, tucking in the tail piece, and tying firmly with the needle.
Rub the bird with a cut lemon.
Wrap it in buttered paper or cloth.
Boil and serve
Place the wrapped fowl in a pan of boiling water, breast side down, and simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours.
Serve covered with white sauce.
Garnish with lemon, egg yolk, parsley, and rolls of fried bacon.
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.
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Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,037 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking slowly in simmering water to become tender.
- Butter
- Wrapping with butter adds moisture and richness to the surface of the bird as it cooks.
- Lemon
- Rubbed over the bird, its acidity brightens the flavour of the meat.
- White sauce
- Adds creamy richness and moisture to the cooked chicken at serving.
The step that matters
Simmer, do not boil hard. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks the fowl evenly and keeps the meat tender. A vigorous boil toughens muscle proteins and can break the bird apart.
“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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