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Braised Fowl

A braised fowl cooked with butter, wine, onion, mace, shallot, peppercorns, salt, bay leaf, lard, cornflour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,677 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Braised Fowl

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat a stewpan with 2 ounces of butter until hot.

  2. Fill the fowl with good forcemeat.

  3. Add ½ cup white wine, onion, mace, shallot, peppercorns, salt, and bay leaf to the stewpan.

  4. Place a piece of lard on top of the fowl and cover tightly.

Braise

  1. Simmer over low heat for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the fowl and strain the gravy.

Finish the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with 1 teaspoon cornflour and ¼ cup cream.

  2. Return the gravy to the saucepan and simmer for another 15 minutes before serving.

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. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Young fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, and its meat becomes tender during slow simmering.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that flavour the braising liquid and the gravy.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the chicken and sits well on the plate.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the gravy's flavour and giving it a smoother body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour for the initial heating of the stewpan.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat for 1 hour. Gentle, low heat keeps the liquid barely moving so the connective tissue in the fowl breaks down slowly into tender meat. A rolling boil toughens the muscle fibres and can dry the bird out.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, white wine, onion, clove, shallot, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, white wine, onion, clove, shallot, cream. 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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