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Stewed Chicken

Stewed chicken simmered with milk, pepper, and herbs, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces, head, and feet in weak saltwater.

  2. Place the chicken in a saucepan and cover with water.

  3. Simmer slowly for one hour.

  4. Remove the chicken with a fork.

  5. Place the chicken in a bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Add milk and black pepper to the cooking liquid.

  2. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  3. Strain the liquid over the chicken.

  4. Rinse the saucepan.

  5. Return the strained liquid to the heat.

  6. Beat the egg with flour and milk until smooth.

  7. Stir the mixture into the saucepan.

  8. Add minced parsley, thyme, onion, and butter. Stir the mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over neatly arranged pieces of toast.

  2. Garnish with curled parsley.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavour, which is released into the cooking liquid during simmering.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Stabilises the egg and milk mixture so it thickens without curdling.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot liquid. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the liquid is too hot or added too fast, the egg can curdle instead of thickening the sauce smoothly. Adding the mixture gradually and stirring keeps it silky.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, pepper, egg, flour, butter, parsley. 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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