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Boiled Chicken

A whole chicken is boiled after being seasoned, wrapped, and simmered, served with egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stuff the chicken as for roasting.

  2. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Tie the legs and wings to the sides of the chicken.

Wrap the chicken

  1. Dip a napkin in cold water and wring the napkin out.

  2. Dredge the napkin thickly with flour.

  3. Wrap the chicken in the napkin and pin it closed.

Boil and serve

  1. Plunge the wrapped chicken into boiling water for 15 minutes.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with egg sauce.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Flour
Forms a floury crust on the napkin that helps hold the wrapping together during boiling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the chicken.

The step that matters

Plunge the wrapped chicken into boiling water, then reduce heat. Starting in boiling water sets the outer layers quickly, while a gentle simmer cooks the interior without toughening the meat. Keeping the water at a steady simmer rather than a hard boil helps the meat stay tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour. 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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