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Pieds De Mouton Aux Concombres, E» Fricassee De Poulets

A stew of sheep's trotters and cucumbers simmered with butter, herbs, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pieds De Mouton Aux Concombres, E» Fricassee De Poulets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the sheep's trotters in water until tender.

  2. Soak the diced cucumbers in vinegar and salt for 1 hour, then squeeze out excess liquid.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the trotters, cucumbers, butter, parsley, green onions, cloves, bay leaf, and garlic.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally.

  3. Mix flour with stock and add to the stewpan, then cook gently until the cucumbers are tender and the sauce reduces.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks with cream, stir into the mixture and thicken over low heat.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Serve.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's trotters
Provide gelatinous body and rich texture to the stew as they cook tender.
Cucumbers
Supply the main vegetable body and a fresh, slightly tart flavour to the dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and firms the cucumber pieces during soaking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying aroma into the stewed mixture.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and sauce into a smooth, rich finish when gently heated.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils, they scramble and curdle. Keep the heat low and stir steadily while the sauce thickens.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, butter, parsley, onion, garlic, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, butter, parsley, onion, garlic, flour. 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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