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Hashed Fowl

A stew of boiled fowl joints seasoned with pepper, salt, and optional aromatics, thickened with flour and butter, finished with mushroom catsup and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hashed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Bruise the fowl joints with a rolling pin.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of water and boil for 1.5 to 2 hours with pepper and salt, or with onion, carrot, and herbs.

  3. Add the browned onion to the bones while stewing.

  4. Strain and skim the fat from the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. In a clean saucepan, heat the gravy and stir in ½ teaspoon of flour mixed with a small bit of butter to thicken if needed.

  2. Add mushroom catsup and a slight seasoning of mace or nutmeg.

  3. Add the fowl to the saucepan and keep it near the fire until heated through and just boiling.

  4. Before serving, add cayenne and lemon juice.

  5. Serve with fried sippets around the dish.

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

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

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the fowl rather than running thin.
Butter
Carries the flour into the gravy and adds richness and a rounded flavor.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the gravy.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stock when browned.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Adding the fowl to the gravy. Once the fowl is added, it should only be heated until just hot and barely boiling. Prolonged boiling toughens the meat's proteins and can make the gravy cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, carrot, flour, butter, mushroom, mace, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, carrot, flour, butter, mushroom, mace, lemon. 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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