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Larded Chicken

A whole chicken larded with pork, roasted with aromatics and stock, served with a clear gravy or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Larded Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chicken for roasting and lard the breasts with the pieces of larding pork.

  2. Place the chicken in a saucepan with the sliced onion, carrot, parsley roots, cloves, garlic, peppercorns, thyme, bay leaf, and salt. Add enough consommé to cover three-quarters of the chicken.

  3. Bring to a boil.

Roast and serve

  1. Transfer to a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1 hour, basting occasionally.

  2. Serve with a puree of artichokes, celery, French chestnuts, sauce Allemande, or a clear gravy.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Larding pork
Melts during cooking, adding fat and moisture to the lean breast meat.
Consommé (stock)
Provides liquid that gently steams and moistens the chicken as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the cooking liquid.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Transfer to a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1 hour, basting occasionally. Lean breast meat dries out easily in dry heat. Basting with the cooking liquid and fat helps keep the surface moist and promotes even browning, so the meat stays juicy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, onion, carrot, parsley, garlic, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, onion, carrot, parsley, garlic, 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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