Skip to main content
Main

Fowl, Hashed

A stew of cold roast fowl pieces simmered in stock with a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Divide the fowl into convenient joints.

  2. If stock is not available, simmer the bones and trimmings in water for at least 1 hour, adding flavoring vegetables.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then fry the flour until lightly browned.

  2. Add the stock to the pan and stir until boiling.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the pieces of fowl.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let the stewpan simmer for at least 30 minutes, keeping it hot without boiling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Remains of cold roast fowl
Forms the main body of the hash and supplies the meat that absorbs the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that becomes the sauce and carries flavour through the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour so it can cook into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce once fried in butter and cooked through.

The step that matters

Frying the flour in butter. Flour must cook until lightly browned to lose its raw taste and to thicken smoothly; stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching.

“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.

More fowl hash recipes

You might also like