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Stewed Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with onions, herbs, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Brown the onions in flour or lard.

  2. Add the chicken pieces, pepper, salt, pot-marjoram, thyme, ginger, and butter.

  3. Cover with water and let it stew, closely covered.

Finish the gravy

  1. Once cooked, mix the egg yolks with parsley and flour, then stir into the gravy.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Thyme + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together421 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Brown and soften to build the savory base of the gravy.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavour that the stew is built around.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy when stirred in at the end.
Flour
Helps brown the onions and thickens the gravy with the egg yolks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk mixture into the gravy. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the gravy is boiling hot they can scramble into specks. Stirring them in off the heat or at a gentle simmer keeps the gravy smooth and silky.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, chicken, pepper, marjoram, thyme, butter. 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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