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Stewed Chicken

A stew made from chicken pieces simmered with butter, milk or cream, flour, pepper, and sea salt, served with biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces.

  2. Cook the pieces in water.

  3. Skim the surface.

  4. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. When the chicken is nearly done, add 1 cup of butter.

Make the gravy and serve

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

  2. Serve the chicken with the gravy poured over it, alongside hot baking powder biscuits.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish and releases juices that flavour the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stewed chicken a smoother, more rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a gravy by absorbing liquid and swelling when heated.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding richness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the gravy flour mixture. Flour must be mixed fully into the milk or cream before heating so it does not clump. Starch needs heat to swell and thicken the liquid evenly into a smooth gravy.

“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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