Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Fowl

A whole fowl stuffed with onion, bay leaf, parsley, celery, and simmered in salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the fowl with salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Wrap the fowl in a square of dampened cheesecloth.

  3. Place it in a large saucepan and add the sliced onion, bay leaf, parsley, and chopped celery.

Simmer

  1. Cover with boiling water and bring to a boil. Cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer until tender, about 1.5 to 2 hours. After 45 minutes, add 1½ teaspoons of salt to the water.

Finish and serve

  1. When done, unwrap the fowl and remove trussing strings.

  2. Serve with oyster sauce or egg sauce poured over it. Garnish with finely chopped parsley if desired.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main body of meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the poaching liquid, subtly seasoning the bird as it cooks.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the poaching liquid.
Flour
Dusted on the fowl, it helps the skin and surface hold seasoning and thicken the surrounding liquid slightly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens meat and can break the bird apart. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer lets connective tissue soften slowly, producing tender meat with a clean broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, parsley, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, parsley, celery. 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.

More stuffed chicken recipes

Oyster 22Legs 14Roasted 4Boiled 3Rice 3Steamed 3 See all 39 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes