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Fowl, Fried, with Peas

A dish of fried fowl served with peas in a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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, Fried, with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl and stock

  1. Divide the fowl into serving pieces and boil the bones and trimmings to make stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the fowl in hot butter until well browned, then remove and keep it warm.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and brown slightly, then add the stock and stir until boiling. Season to taste.

  3. Replace the fowl in the pan, cover, and let it sit off the heat for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Meanwhile, boil and drain the peas, seasoning them with pepper.

  2. Serve the fowl arranged in a circle on a hot dish with the sauce strained over and the peas piled in the center, or serve the peas separately.

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which is browned in butter for flavour and colour.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the fowl and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce once it is browned in the pan drippings.
Stock
Liquid that forms the body of the sauce and carries flavour from the bones.
Peas
Adds a fresh, sweet vegetable element alongside the meat.

The step that matters

Browning the flour before adding stock. Lightly browning the flour in the fat develops a nutty, toasted flavour and colour in the sauce. Adding stock too soon, or skipping the browning, leaves the sauce pale and tasting of raw flour.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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