Why it works: Oyster and ham work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 360 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Boiled Fowl
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and cook
Truss the fowl and wrap it in a cloth.
Boil the fowl for 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on its age and size.
Serve
Serve with oyster, celery, or white sauce.
Optionally, serve with boiled ham or bacon.
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.
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Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together360 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,233 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Celery + hamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,608 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
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Oyster + celerytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,131 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Sauce + hamtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,314 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fowl
- Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers slowly in water.
The step that matters
Boiling time. Older or larger birds have tougher connective tissue and need longer gentle cooking to become tender. Judging the time by age and size, as the record advises, helps avoid undercooked or stringy meat.
Swap the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, sauce, ham):
- Capersfits better
- Celerythe original
- Parsleyfits about as well
- Tarragonfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sauce, ham. 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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