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Steamed Chicken

A whole hen stuffed with seasoned rice and giblets, then steamed until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Steamed Chicken

Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Steamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hen

  1. Truss the hen tightly, securing the legs and wings to the body.

  2. Rub the hen inside and out with melted butter, salt, and white pepper.

Stuff and arrange

  1. In a bowl, mix the cooked rice with curry powder, and season with additional pepper and salt.

  2. Stuff the hen with three tablespoons of the seasoned rice and the giblets.

  3. Place the hen in a dish that fits it closely and surround it with the remaining rice.

Steam

  1. Put the dish in a steamer and cook for four hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. White pepper + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. White pepper + ricetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Old hen
Provides the main body of the dish, and its long cooking turns tough connective tissue tender.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the skin and meat during cooking.
Cooked rice
Absorbs juices from the hen and adds bulk and texture to the stuffing and surrounding dish.

The step that matters

Put the dish in a steamer and cook for four hours.. Steaming holds moisture around the hen, and the long, gentle heat is needed to make an old bird tender. Keeping the steam steady and the pot covered prevents the meat from drying out.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, pepper. 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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