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Fowl Ragout

A savory stew of fowl, ham or bacon, butter, flour, stock, onion, salt and pepper, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fowl Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the fowl

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the fowl pieces until nicely browned, then remove and keep warm.

  3. Fry the onion slightly in the same pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Sprinkle in the flour and cook slowly until well browned.

  2. Add the stock and stir until boiling.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then return the fowl to the pan.

  4. Add the diced ham or bacon and cover closely.

Simmer and serve

  1. Cook gently for 1 to 1½ hours, or until the fowl is tender.

  2. Serve with the sauce strained over the fowl.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow gentle cooking in the sauce.
Butter or good fat
Carries the browning of the fowl and adds richness and flavour to the pan.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce once cooked until browned.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the ragout that the flour thickens.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the sauce during the long covered cooking.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until well browned. Browning the flour in the fat develops a nutty, deeper colour and flavour and removes raw floury taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce pale and pasty, while cooking too fast can scorch it before the sauce is properly developed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, flour, 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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