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Pollo En Pepian Dulce

Chicken simmered in a sauce of roasted peppers, tomatoes, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and spices.

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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts, sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the chicken and sauce base

  1. Put the chicken pieces into a heavy casserole, pour in the stock, adding a little more to cover if necessary. Cover and simmer until almost tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Grind the sesame and pumpkin seeds in a blender or food processor as fine as possible, then shake through a sieve. Set aside the ground seeds.

  3. Put the peppers, tomatoes, onion, and garlic into a blender or food processor and reduce to a coarse puree. Mix the puree with the ground sesame and pumpkin seeds.

  4. Heat the lard or vegetable oil in a skillet, add the puree, and cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, for 5 minutes.

Make the sauce and finish the chicken

  1. Drain the chicken, reserve the stock, and return the chicken to the casserole.

  2. Add to the puree 1 cup of the stock, the Seville (bitter) orange juice, allspice, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir to mix, and pour over the chicken.

  3. Cover and simmer gently until the chicken is tender, about 15 minutes. Add a little more stock if necessary.

Garnish and serve

  1. Soak the raisins in cold water to cover for 15 minutes. Drain the raisins thoroughly.

  2. Heat a little butter in a skillet and sauté the almonds until they are golden.

  3. Transfer the chicken and sauce to a warmed serving dish and sprinkle with the raisins and almonds. Serve with rice.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Chicken + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,839 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Sesame + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,192 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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; slow simmering in stock keeps the meat tender and moist.
Pepitas and sesame seeds
Ground to a fine paste, they thicken the sauce and give it a nutty body.
Red bell peppers or pimientos
Supply sweetness, colour and body to the puree that forms the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, helping the puree cook into a smooth sauce.
Seville orange juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the rich seed paste and sweetens the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the puree for 5 minutes with constant stirring. Frying the ground seed and vegetable puree in fat cooks off raw flavour and thickens it. Stirring prevents scorching on the pan bottom, which would make the sauce taste bitter and burnt.

Flavor stand-ins for the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sesame, pumpkin, pepper, tomato, onion, garlic):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Mangobetter flavor fit
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sesame, pumpkin, pepper, tomato, onion, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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