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Russian Chicken

A chicken stew with mushrooms, onion, cauliflower, peas, thickened with flour and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Russian Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces as for a fricassee.

  2. Stew the chicken in boiling water with the raw vegetables, adding the onion whole.

  3. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Drain the gravy and thicken it with flour and cream.

  2. Place the chicken on a platter surrounded by the cooked vegetables and cover with the gravy.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Cauliflower + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Mushroom + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the stew, becoming tender through slow cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy by swelling with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the gravy.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour and a tender texture to the stew.
Peas
Add sweetness and a soft texture as they cook in the broth.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the chicken is tender. Gentle simmering lets connective tissue break down slowly, producing tender meat. A hard boil toughens the proteins and can make the chicken dry and stringy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, onion, cauliflower, flour, cream):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, onion, cauliflower, flour, cream. 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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