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Fowl, Ragout of

A stew of fowl pieces with ham or bacon, butter, flour, stock, onion, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 of

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Brown the fowl pieces in the butter, then remove and keep warm.

  3. Sauté the onion until slightly softened.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and cook slowly until browned.

  5. Add the stock and stir until boiling.

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

  7. Add the ham or bacon, cover, and cook gently for 1 to 1½ hours until the fowl is tender.

  8. Serve with the sauce strained over.

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, covered cooking in the sauce.
Flour
Cooked in the butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the fowl and onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils and reduces.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the sauce during the long gentle cooking.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until browned. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred and cooked slowly until browned. Browning develops nutty flavour and colour, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and weak thickening.

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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