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A Fowl A-LA-braise

A braised fowl cooked with bacon, Madeira wine, herbs, mace, lemon, oysters, and cream, garnished with barberries and beet-root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,314 recipes mention both. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling, with the legs tucked into the body.

  2. Lay the bacon slices over the fowl and wrap it in a veal caul (or beet leaves).

Stew and make the sauce

  1. Stew the wrapped fowl in water, Madeira wine, herbs, mace, and lemon until tender.

  2. Remove the fowl and skim off the fat from the cooking liquid.

  3. Strain the liquid and add oysters and cream; simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the fowl with bacon and caul on top, pouring the sauce over it.

  2. Garnish with barberries and red beet-root.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mace + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Mace + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together4,009 recipes
  3. Oyster + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,883 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Madeira wine + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together243 recipes
  5. Madeira wine + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the liquid.
Fat bacon
Bastes the fowl with fat as it cooks, adding savoury flavour and moisture.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the finished sauce.
Cream
Enriches the sauce, giving it body, smoothness and a mellow richness.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the cooking liquid. Fat from the bacon and fowl floats on the stock and can make the sauce greasy and heavy. Removing it before the cream and oysters go in keeps the sauce clean and smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (madeira wine, mace, oyster, cream):

  1. Currantbetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Strawberryabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against madeira wine, mace, oyster, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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