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Stewed Chicken and Dumplings

A stew of chicken, carrots, turnip, onion, and dumplings cooked in water, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the chicken and place it in a deep stew pan with 3 pints of water.

  2. In another saucepan, boil the carrot, turnip, and onion slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the vegetables.

  4. Add the strained vegetables to the stew pan with the chicken, mashing them through the strainer.

Thicken and simmer

  1. Skim 2 tablespoons of chicken fat.

  2. Heat the skimmed fat in the vegetable saucepan.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of flour to the hot fat.

  4. Stir the flour into the hot fat with the chicken.

  5. Simmer until tender for about 2 hours.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

Add dumplings

  1. Add dumplings to the stew.

  2. Cook the dumplings for 10 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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 meat and flavourful fat that build the body of the stew.
Flour
Cooked in the hot fat, it thickens the stew into a smoother, richer liquid.
Onion
Its sugars and aromatics, slowly cooked, add sweetness and savour to the broth.
Carrot
Its natural sweetness and body are strained into the broth, adding flavour.
Turnip
Its mild flavour and starch are strained into the broth, adding body and savour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the hot fat. Flour must be cooked in hot fat so its starch swells evenly without lumps. Adding it cold or unstirred leaves clumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, 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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