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Stewed Chicken

A simple chicken stew with butter, onions, carrots, potatoes, and stock, simmered slowly for a rich flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and carrot, and sauté until softened.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and fry until delicately browned.

  4. Pour in the white stock and add the bay leaf.

  5. Stir in the diced potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  6. Reduce heat and cook slowly on the back of the stove for 2 hours.

  7. If desired, add cooked mushrooms in butter at the end for extra flavor.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 meaty flavor as it browns and slowly cooks in the stock.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and helps the chicken brown while adding richness.
White stock
Forms the cooking liquid that gently tenderizes the chicken and builds the sauce.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking liquid and soften, thickening the stew and giving it body.
Onion
Softens and adds savory sweetness that forms the base flavor of the stew.
Carrot
Softens during sautéing and adds gentle sweetness to the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken. Frying the chicken until delicately browned develops savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale, unbrowned pieces will taste flat, since the long simmer adds moisture but little browning flavor.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, potato, pepper, mushroom. 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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