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Stewed Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with milk, egg, flour, herbs, and butter, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 cut-up chicken, head, and feet in weak salt and water.

  2. An hour and a half before dinner, place the chicken in a saucepan.

  3. Cover with water.

  4. Simmer slowly for one hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the chicken with a fork and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add milk and black pepper to the cooking liquid and 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. Add minced parsley, thyme, and onion.

  8. Stir the mixture into the saucepan.

  9. Add butter.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the arranged 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. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Beaten into the sauce to thicken it and give it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Flour
Combined with the egg and milk to help thicken the sauce and stabilise it.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the sauce, mellowing its savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Chicken
Gives the stew its savoury meat and body, with the head and feet adding gelatin.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot liquid. If the beaten egg and flour mixture is added carelessly or the liquid is too hot, the egg can scramble and the sauce turns lumpy. Stirring steadily as it goes in keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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