Skip to main content
Main

Braised Chicken

Braised chicken cooked slowly with butter, bread, vegetables, herbs, and water, then browned in oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Chicken

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 the chicken

  1. Wipe the chicken.

  2. Stuff the chicken.

  3. Sew it up.

  4. Skewer the chicken.

Braise

  1. Place the chicken on a rack in a kettle with a tight cover.

  2. Spread butter on the slice of bread. Place the buttered bread in the bottom of the kettle.

  3. Add the chopped carrot, onion, turnip, celery, bay leaf, parsley, peppercorns, and salt. Pour in 3 cups of boiling water.

  4. Cover the kettle. Cook for 8 to 10 hours.

Brown and finish

  1. When tender, brush the chicken with butter. Dredge the chicken with flour.

  2. Brown the chicken in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, moist cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown when brushed on before oven browning.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the skin brown and form a crisp coating.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the braising liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Cook for 8 to 10 hours. Long, gentle cooking in a covered kettle breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the chicken becomes tender. Cooking too hot or too briefly leaves it tough and dry, and the covered pot keeps steam and moisture in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, bread, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, bread, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley. 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.

More braised chicken recipes

with Tomatoes 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes