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To Braise Fowls

A braised fowl cooked with bacon, beet leaves, caul of veal, and a sauce of Madeira wine, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Braise Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Truss the fowl with the legs inside the body.

  2. Layer the fowl with bacon slices.

  3. Wrap the fowl in beet leaves and caul of veal.

Braise and make the sauce

  1. Place the fowl in a large saucepan with water, Madeira wine, sweet herbs, mace, and lemon.

  2. Stew until tender.

  3. Remove the fowl and skim off the fat.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  5. Strain the gravy.

  6. Add oysters and cream to the gravy.

  7. Simmer the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the fowl with bacon, beet leaves, and caul, pouring the hot 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Fat bacon
Bastes the bird as it cooks and adds savoury richness to the meat and gravy.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce as it simmers.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smoother, thicker body to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the fowl rather than running off.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a subtly sweet, fortified flavour to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Slow, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue in the fowl; boiling hard instead toughens the meat and can make the gravy cloudy. Cooking too briefly leaves the bird tough.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, madeira wine, lemon, flour, butter, oyster, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, madeira wine, lemon, flour, butter, oyster, 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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