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Boiled, with Celery Sauce

A hen or young cock wrapped in bacon, boiled, and served with celery or oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled, with Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the hen or cock nicely.

  2. Wrap it in layers of bacon and then in a cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in plain water with salt, butter, and lemon juice.

  2. Drain and cover with celery sauce or oyster sauce.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + celerytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hen
The main protein, which firms and cooks through during boiling to form the dish.
Bacon
Its fat bastes the bird and adds savoury flavour as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded richness to the cooking liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked bird.

The step that matters

Boil gently, not violently. A hard, rolling boil toughens the meat and can make the skin split and the bacon wrapping break apart. A gentle simmer lets the proteins set slowly, keeping the flesh tender and juicy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon. 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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