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Poultry, Ragout of

A ragout made with roasted poultry, brown gravy, flour‑butter paste, parsley, capers, eggs, and optional ham or anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Poultry, Ragout of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ragout

  1. Cut the roasted poultry into even dice or strips.

  2. For each pound of poultry, use 2 to 3 cups of brown gravy or stock.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the gravy and poultry.

  4. Mix in a paste made from equal parts flour and butter.

  5. Add chopped parsley and bruised capers.

  6. Press the yolks of hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and stir into the sauce.

  7. Add minced poultry and ham, adjusting flavor with anchovy essence if needed.

  8. Heat the mixture over boiling water, covered, until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish, garnished with chopped egg whites, pickles, or lemon.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Poultry
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the ragout.
Brown gravy or stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the dish.
Flour and butter paste
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce with richness and a creamy body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. Flour must be cooked in fat and whisked into liquid to thicken smoothly; added carelessly it forms lumps that won't dissolve evenly.

“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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