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Boiled Fowl, with Parsley Sauce

A boiled fowl served with a parsley sauce made from butter, flour, and fowl stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl, with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Dip the fowl in hot water for 1 minute.

  2. Rub the fowl with a cut lemon to whiten it.

  3. Cover the breast with a slice of fat bacon.

  4. Tie the fowl in a clean cloth.

  5. Place the fowl in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover it.

  6. Boil the fowl quickly.

  7. Simmer the fowl gently until done.

Make the parsley sauce

  1. Wash the parsley in salted water.

  2. Dip the parsley twice in boiling water.

  3. Chop the parsley leaves finely.

  4. Knead the butter with the baked flour.

  5. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the water from boiling the fowl.

  6. Simmer the sauce for 5 minutes.

  7. Stir in the chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Place the fowl on a hot dish, removing the bacon.

  2. Pour half the sauce over the breast.

  3. Serve the remaining sauce in a tureen.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Whole fowl
Provides the main cooked meat, which is gently simmered until tender.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Baked flour
Thickens the sauce when kneaded with butter and stirred into the hot cooking liquid.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal flavour and colour to the sauce.
Fat bacon
Lays over the breast to add fat and flavour to the meat while it cooks.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the hot fowl water. Adding the kneaded butter and flour to hot liquid while stirring disperses the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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