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Pain of Stock-Pot Fowl

A poached fowl mixture baked in a mold, served with mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pain of Stock-Pot Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the meat from the breast of a boiled fowl.

  2. Add ⅓ cup panada and season with coarse sea salt and nutmeg.

  3. Stir in 4-5 tablespoons of béchamel sauce and 8 raw egg yolks.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve or tamper.

  5. Work the mixture for 2 minutes with a spoon in a kitchen basin.

Poach and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered round mold with a cylinder.

  2. Place the mold in a stewpan with boiling water, halfway up the mold.

  3. Poach in a bain-marie for 45 minutes without boiling.

  4. Remove from heat and turn the 'pain' out onto a dish at serving time.

  5. Mask with mushroom 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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable custard-like texture when poached.
Fowl breast meat
Provides the main body of the pain once pounded and bound together.
Panada
Adds body and helps the mixture hold together with a tender texture.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pain soft rather than dry.

The step that matters

Poaching without boiling. Gentle bain-marie heat sets the egg yolks into a smooth, tender pain. Boiling water can cause the mixture to curdle, crack, or become rubbery and porous.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, egg, butter. 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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