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To Stew Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in water with optional mushrooms, celery, tomatoes, and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

To Stew Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place chicken pieces and giblets in a stew pan.

  2. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the chicken, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.

Make the stew

  1. In a bowl, mix butter and flour together.

  2. Gradually add the butter‑flour mixture to the chicken broth.

  3. Cook until the chicken is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made from the broth, adding mushrooms, celery, and giblets, or use only giblet sauce.

  2. Tomatoes can be added for a nice sauce, and dumplings can be included if desired.

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

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

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a sauce when mixed with butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Gradually add the butter‑flour mixture to the chicken broth. Adding the flour mixture slowly and stirring helps it disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, mushroom, tomato):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, mushroom, tomato. 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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