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Braised Chickens

A slow‑cooked chicken dish braised in water and fat salt pork, finished with a brown flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Braised Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff and truss the chickens as for roasting.

  2. Lay them on slices of fat salt pork in a broad pot.

Braise

  1. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the chickens.

  2. Cover closely and cook slowly for 2 hours, or until the chickens are tender.

Brown and make the gravy

  1. Remove the chickens to a dripping pan and let them brown in the oven.

  2. Strain the remaining gravy, thicken it with brown flour, and boil until the right consistency.

Serve

  1. Dish the chickens, season the gravy to taste, and serve in a gravy boat.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, covered cooking.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the pot as the chickens cook.
Brown flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the chicken.

The step that matters

Cover closely and cook slowly for 2 hours. Low, covered heat lets the connective tissue in the chicken break down slowly, keeping the meat tender and moist. Too much heat or an uncovered pot can toughen the meat and dry out the chicken.

“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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