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Hashed Fowl

A dish of small pieces of fowl stewed in stock, thickened with flour and butter, served with poached eggs, parsley, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Hashed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Cut the meat from a cold fowl into small pieces.

  2. In a stew-pan, heat ½ pint of well-flavored stock, then add a little salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Thicken the stock with flour and butter, then let it boil.

  4. Add the pieces of fowl to warm them.

Serve

  1. After stewing sufficiently, serve with poached eggs on top.

  2. Garnish with a sprig of parsley and pieces of fried bread around the plate.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl meat
Forms the main body of the hash, to be warmed through in the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor for the hash.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce that coats the meat.
Butter
Enriches the thickened sauce, adding richness and smooth texture.
Eggs
Poached on top, adding richness when the yolk mixes with the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock. Flour must be cooked in the boiling stock long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken evenly. Adding it lumpy or undercooked leaves a pasty flavor and uneven texture.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, nutmeg, flour, butter, egg, bread. 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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