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Boiled Fowls

A whole chicken is boiled with bread and butter, then served with parsley and oyster or celery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the chicken in a well-floured cloth.

Cook

  1. Place the chicken in cold water and simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Stuff the chicken with slices of bread and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley and butter, and oyster or celery sauce either over the chicken or in a sauceboat.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked gently by simmering in water.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread stuffing and the finished dish.
Slices of bread
Absorb cooking juices and butter in the stuffing, becoming soft and flavourful.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in cold water. Starting in cold water and holding a gentle simmer cooks the chicken evenly and keeps the meat tender and juicy. A hard boil can toughen the muscle fibres and make the skin split.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, bread, butter, pepper, oyster):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, bread, butter, pepper, oyster. 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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