Name: Stewed Chicken
Ingredients: 1 good sized chicken; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 cup butter; milk or cream; flour for gravy; baking powder biscuits

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

Cut the chicken into pieces and cook it in water.
Skim off any foam that rises to the surface.
Add pepper and salt to taste when the chicken is nearly done.
Stir in 1 cup of butter.

Make the gravy

In a separate bowl, mix milk or cream with enough flour to create a gravy.

Serve

Serve the chicken with hot baking powder biscuits.
Break the biscuits into two or three pieces.
Pour the gravy over.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,389 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the chicken a rounder flavor and silkier texture.
Flour: Thickens the milk or cream into a gravy as its starch swells when heated.
Milk or cream: Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding richness and body.

“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.