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Boiled Chicken

A simple boiled chicken seasoned with salt and lemon, served with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chicken in salt water for an hour.

  2. Remove the skin and veins from the chicken.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the chicken in a pot with boiling water.

  2. Add salt and lemon juice, and cook slowly for about 8 to 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with butter and garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 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

Chicken
Forms the main protein that becomes tender and juicy as it cooks gently in water.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked chicken.

The step that matters

Cook slowly after adding the chicken to boiling water. Once the chicken goes into boiling water, the temperature drops. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the meat evenly and keeps it tender, while a hard boil can toughen the proteins and dry out the outside.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, butter. 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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