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Braised Fowl

Braised fowl is a slow‑cooked chicken with vegetables, stock, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and truss the chicken.

  2. Place it in a large casserole with boiling water and add vinegar or lemon juice.

  3. Cover the casserole to keep in the steam.

Braise

  1. After 2 hours, add carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, cloves, onion, Tabasco or green pepper, and salt.

  2. Add more water if necessary.

  3. Cover the casserole.

  4. Continue cooking until the chicken is tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the chicken from the casserole.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. Remove some fat from the liquid. Measure the fat.

  4. Return the fat to the casserole.

  5. In boiling stock, blend flour with water.

  6. Stir the mixture to thicken.

  7. Let the mixture boil for a few minutes.

  8. Adjust seasoning if needed.

Serve

  1. Carve the chicken.

  2. Arrange the carved chicken in the casserole.

  3. Heat the casserole.

  4. Serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Long gentle cooking in liquid turns tough connective tissue tender, so the meat becomes moist and soft.
Flour
Starch thickens the boiling stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid body to the sauce that thickens with the flour.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Acidity helps soften the chicken's connective tissue during the long braise.

The step that matters

Blending the flour with water before adding it to the stock. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because the outer starch gelatinises before the inside hydrates. Blending it smooth with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, vinegar, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, vinegar, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, 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.

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