Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Stew

A chicken stew with tomatoes, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Spanish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Joint the chicken and place it in a kettle.

Stew

  1. Add the tomatoes, onion, celery, carrot, and enough water to cover the chicken.

  2. Season with salt and add the half Mexican pepper.

  3. Stew until the chicken is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sugar, mushrooms, and drained peas.

  2. Bring to a boil 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 slow stewing makes the meat tender and rich in flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, building the body and savoury flavour of the stew.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the stewing liquid.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, celery, carrot, pepper, sugar, mushroom):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, celery, carrot, pepper, sugar, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes