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Quenelles of Fowl

A roasted fowl stuffed with truffle, bacon, and butter, seasoned with cayenne and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Quenelles of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Use the breast of fowl instead of veal for the farce.

  2. Chop the green truffles and mix with scraped bacon and fresh butter.

  3. Add a little cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to the mixture.

  4. Stuff the fowl with the truffle mixture and secure both ends.

Hang and roast

  1. Hang the fowl for a week or ten days, if the weather permits.

  2. When ready to cook, truss the fowl for roasting and secure it on a spit.

  3. Cover the breast with slices of fat bacon and tie sheets of paper over it.

  4. Roast the fowl, which will take about two hours for a large bird.

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. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Truffle + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of fowl
Provides the lean meat that forms the farce, giving the quenelles their body and texture.
Green truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that flavours the stuffing as it cooks.
Scraped bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the stuffing moist during roasting.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the truffle mixture, helping it stay tender.

The step that matters

Securing the fowl and covering the breast. Sealing both ends keeps the truffle stuffing inside, and the bacon and paper over the breast shield the lean meat from direct heat so it does not dry out or over-brown during roasting.

“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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