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Fowls a LA Mayonnaise

Roasted fowls served with mayonnaise sauce and optional thick cream, garnished with lettuce hearts and hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fowls a LA Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

  1. Carve the cold roast fowls neatly.

  2. Place the inferior joints in the center of a dish.

  3. Arrange the other pieces around and over the inferior joints, piling them high.

Garnish and serve

  1. Cut the hearts of young lettuces in half and border the dish with them.

  2. Halve the hard-boiled eggs lengthwise and add them to the border.

  3. Just before serving, pour mayonnaise sauce over the fowls or use a salad mixture with thick cream instead of oil.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cold roast fowls
Provide the main cooked meat that forms the body of the dish.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture, coating the meat with a creamy, fatty dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild protein garnish that contrasts with the soft meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the mayonnaise just before serving. Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil, egg and acid that can thin, separate or become watery if it sits too long or warms up. Adding it at the last moment keeps the sauce thick and cool and the meat from becoming soggy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce, cream):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, cream. 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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