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Boiled Chickens and Tongue

Boiled chickens and tongue 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: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Chickens and Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chickens

  1. Tie the chickens in netting to fit their shape.

Cook the chickens

  1. Cook the chickens in plenty of boiling water with a little salt for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Prepare and cook the tongue

  1. Soak the tongue overnight.

  2. Wash the tongue well.

  3. Boil the tongue for 18 minutes per pound.

  4. Trim the tongue.

  5. Skin the tongue.

Serve

  1. Place the tongue in the middle of a serving dish.

  2. Place a chicken on each side of the tongue.

  3. Pour drawn butter over the chickens and tongue, using ¼ cup of the boiling liquor mixed with minced 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which cooks gently in simmering water and stays moist.
Tongue
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle boiling after soaking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the drawn butter poured over the meat.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle simmer. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle proteins and can break the meat apart, so a gentle simmer keeps the chickens and tongue tender and intact.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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