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To Boil Fowl

A whole fowl boiled and served with parsley, butter, and various sauces, optionally accompanied by ham, tongue, bacon, and greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

To Boil Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose a fowl that is not black-legged.

  2. Pick, singe, wash, and truss the fowl.

  3. Dust the fowl with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the fowl into boiling water.

  2. Serve with parsley and butter, and your choice of sauces.

  3. For dinner, serve with ham, tongue, or bacon, along with greens.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the meat stays moist in the simmering water.
Flour
Dusted on the bird, it helps form a light surface layer and promotes gentle browning.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when served with the cooked fowl.

The step that matters

Placing the fowl into boiling water. Plunging the bird into water that is already boiling helps the skin set quickly and keeps the meat juicy. Starting in cold water lets proteins toughen gradually and can leave the surface less tidy.

“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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