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Prairie Chickens

A dish of prairie chickens prepared by stuffing, steaming, buttering, flouring, baking, and serving with fruit sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prairie Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove all shot from the prairie chickens.

  2. Wash them thoroughly in water with some soda.

  3. Rinse and dry the chickens.

  4. Fill them with dressing.

  5. Sew them up with cotton thread.

  6. Tie down the legs and wings.

Steam

  1. Place the chickens in a steamer over hot water until cooked through.

Roast and serve

  1. Transfer the chickens to a dripping pan.

  2. Cover with butter.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  4. Dredge the chickens with flour.

  5. Place the chickens in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  6. Baste with melted butter until golden brown.

  7. Serve with apple sauce, cranberries, or currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Prairie chickens
Provide the main meat, which is cooked through by steaming and then roasted.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture and helps the skin brown during roasting.
Flour
Dredging helps the surface brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through before roasting. Steaming cooks the meat through first, so the oven mainly browns the skin. Pulling the birds too early leaves the centre undercooked, and skipping the steam risks dry, tough meat if the oven is relied on alone.

“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.

More prairie chicken recipes

Roasted 12Stew 8Roast 7Broiled 5Fried 4Stewed 4 See all 10 →

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