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Boiled Fowl

A whole fowl boiled with milk, water, salt, pepper, lemon juice, butter, parsley, and optional boiled ham, tongue, or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the fowl in milk for 1 hour.

  2. Tie the fowl in a cloth and place it in a saucepan with cold water.

Cook

  1. Heat the saucepan on a slow fire until boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Leave the fowl in the water for an additional 10 minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter mixed with chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice, along with boiled ham, tongue, or bacon if desired.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein; long gentle cooking in water keeps the meat tender and moist.
Milk
Soaking in milk mellows the flavor and may help keep the meat tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the serving sauce, carrying flavor and a smooth mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Heating to boiling, then simmering gently. Once the water reaches a boil, the heat is reduced to a simmer, where the water is just bubbling. Boiling hard toughens muscle proteins and can make the meat dry and stringy, while a gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it tender.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, lemon, butter, ham. 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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