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Boiled Chicken

A boiled chicken stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, celery seed, pepper, and salt, served with rice and rich drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, butter, celery seed, pepper, and salt thoroughly without adding water.

  2. Stuff the chickens with the mixture and bind them tightly with 2‑inch wide strips of cotton.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the chickens in a soup kettle with 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Boil the chickens until cooked through.

  3. Serve with rice piled around them and pour rich drawn butter over the top.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein that becomes tender as it cooks in the water.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the melted butter and seasonings, keeping the stuffing moist and flavorful inside the bird.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing, and the drawn butter adds fat to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Boil the chickens until cooked through. Boiling holds the heat at a steady level, so the meat cooks through without the surface toughening. Cooks should check that the thickest parts, and the stuffing in the cavity, reach a safe internal temperature before serving.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, butter, pepper, rice):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, pepper, rice. 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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