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Chicken a LA Maryland

A chicken stew with onion, carrot, turnip, celery, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, tomatoes, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Maryland

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken, removing the head and legs.

  2. Place the chicken in a pot of warm water to cover.

  3. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, and celery.

  4. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the bones.

  2. Cut the chicken into two-inch pieces.

  3. Cook the stock down to one cup.

  4. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  5. Add the flour to the butter, stirring until smooth.

  6. Slowly stir in the cup of stock.

  7. Add the tomatoes and chicken to the sauce.

  8. Cook for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve surrounded by points of toast or in fried bread baskets.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which becomes tender through slow poaching.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flour so it can thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory depth once reduced.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and a bright, fruity flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the stock. Adding liquid gradually to the butter and flour lets the starch swell evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour. 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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