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Stewed Chicken

A whole chicken stuffed with bread crumbs, onion, lemon peel, parsley, egg, and butter, then stewed with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the chicken with a mixture of bread crumbs, minced onion, lemon peel, parsley, whipped egg, and butter.

  2. Place a piece of fat over the chicken's breast.

Stew and finish

  1. In a stewpan, melt 1 ounce of butter and add the chicken.

  2. Leave it uncovered for 5 minutes, then cover and cook for 1.5 hours.

  3. Add ½ cup of cream, move the stewpan to a hotter part of the fire, and baste thoroughly before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Eggs
Binds the stuffing so it holds together during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk to the stuffing and absorb juices from the chicken.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, flavor, and golden browning of the chicken.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the pan liquid, making it smoother.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and raising the heat. Cream can separate or curdle if it boils hard, so once it goes in, the heat should be raised gently and the liquid kept from a rolling boil while basting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, lemon, parsley, egg, butter, 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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