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Fowl with Peas

A stew of roasted fowl pieces with peas, butter, stock, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fowl with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the fowl pieces in the butter, seasoning with mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Slowly add the flour and stock, stirring until heated through.

  4. Warm the peas in their liquid with the sugar and a little seasoning.

  5. Once hot, place the peas on a dish, arrange the chicken around them, and pour the sauce over the top.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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

Roast fowl
Provides the main meat, which is browned in butter for flavour before serving.
Butter
Fat for frying the fowl, adding richness and browning the surface.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Stock
Liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury flavour and body.
Green peas
Serve as the base of the dish, with sweetness and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Slowly add the flour and stock. Adding flour gradually and stirring keeps it dispersed in the liquid, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, peas, flour, sugar, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, peas, flour, sugar, pepper. 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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