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Sauce to Broiled Fowl

A savory sauce made with onions, butter, flour, fowl parts, pickled mushrooms, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sauce to Broiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Add flour and moisten with the boiling liquid from the fowl, stirring until smooth.

  3. Remove the onions and season the sauce with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Add the garnish and serve

  1. Add the fowl's comb and wattles, kidneys, liver, gizzard, brains, pickled mushrooms, and their vinegar to the sauce.

  2. Keep the sauce hot in a bain-marie until ready to 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Butter
Fat that softens the onions and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Pickled mushrooms
Add a sharp, tangy flavour that contrasts with the rich meats.
Pickled mushroom vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling liquid. Flour added to hot liquid can clump before it disperses. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring constantly lets the starch hydrate evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, pepper, liver, mushroom, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, pepper, liver, mushroom, vinegar. 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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