Skip to main content
Main

Two Legs and a Breast of Fowl, Larded, and Asparagiis Peas

Legs and breast of fowl, larded with bacon, with the legs stuffed with forcemeat and simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,078 recipes. Both carry eugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓

Two Legs and a Breast of Fowl, Larded, and Asparagiis Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the legs of the fowl and stuff them with forced-meat.

  2. Lard the legs and the breast with bacon.

Braise

  1. Place the bones, giblets, and trimmings in a stewpan.

  2. Cover the bones with bacon, add stock, onions, herbs, bay leaves, and mace.

  3. Lay the larded fowl on top and cover with bacon and paper.

  4. Simmer on low heat for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce and garnish with paste or croutons.

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. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  2. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  3. Meat + macetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl legs
Forced-meat stuffing and slow simmering keep the meat moist and tender.
Bacon sheets
Fat from the bacon bastes the lean breast meat, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
Forced-meat
Fills the boned legs, adding richness and holding their shape during cooking.
Second stock
Liquid that gently cooks the fowl and forms the base of the sauce.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer on low heat for 2 hours. Gentle, low heat keeps the lean fowl tender and prevents the protein from tightening and drying out. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and makes the stock cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes