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A Nice Way to Dress a Fowl for a Small Dish

A whole fowl stuffed with veal, ham, bacon, egg yolks, herbs, suet, breadcrumbs, and spices, then stewed and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. In a mortar, combine veal, ham, bacon, egg yolks, herbs, suet, lemon peel, anchovy, salt, pepper, cayenne, and breadcrumbs.

  2. Add the yolks and whites of the eggs and mix well.

Stuff and tie the fowl

  1. Stuff the mixture inside the fowl and tuck the legs and wings inward.

  2. Tie the neck and rump securely.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the fowl in white gravy until tender.

  2. Once cooked, add cream, butter, and flour; bring to a boil.

  3. Serve with a squeeze of lemon on top.

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. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Veal + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Young fowl
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help it set as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and a softer texture.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and with flour helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the fowl and stuffing.

The step that matters

Stew until tender, then add the cream mixture. Simmering gently keeps the fowl moist and tender. Boiling the cream-butter-flour mixture after adding it can cause it to separate or curdle, so keep the heat controlled once it goes in.

“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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