Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Chickens

A stew of young chickens cooked with bacon, bay leaves, onion, parsley, butter, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in a saucepan with diced bacon for 30 minutes.

  2. Add thyme, bay leaves, onion, parsley, and butter.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix egg yolks with cream and pour over the chicken.

  2. Remove the saucepan from the heat immediately.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken pieces on a dish and serve.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, and its meat firms as it cooks.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds savory flavor to the chicken.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a rich sauce as they gently heat.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth finish.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness as it softens in the pan.

The step that matters

Remove the saucepan from the heat immediately.. Egg yolks set gently in cream. If the pan stays too hot, the yolks scramble and curdle, so the sauce should come off the heat as soon as it thickens.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, egg, cream. 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.

More stewed chicken recipes

with Oysters 4with Dumplings 3with Salt Pork 3 See all 64 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes