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Fowl Ragout

A stew made from cold roast fowl pieces simmered with herbs, ham, and stock, thickened with butter and flour, finished with lemon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fowl Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the fowl into neat pieces.

  2. Put the trimmings into a stewpan with shallots, mace, herbs, ham, onion, and stock (or water).

  3. Boil slowly for 1 hour, then strain the liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan, then add enough flour to absorb the butter and stir over heat.

  2. Add the strained liquid, boil for a few minutes, and strain again over the fowl pieces.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze in lemon juice, add sugar, pepper, and salt, and heat through.

  2. Serve the fowl on a dish and garnish with croutons.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the sauce base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the savoury sauce.
Pounded sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that balances the acidity and savoury notes.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. The flour must be fully absorbed and stirred over heat so it cooks into a smooth roux; if it is left raw or lumpy, the sauce tastes floury and turns grainy when the liquid is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, ham, pepper, onion, flour, lemon, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, ham, pepper, onion, flour, lemon, sugar. 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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