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Steamed Chickens

A method of cooking whole chickens by steaming them with salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Steamed Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the inside of the chickens with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the chickens in a steamer.

  3. Select a kettle large enough to hold the steamer and add water.

Steam

  1. Cover the kettle and steam for 1.5 hours, or until the chickens are tender.

  2. Keep the chickens hot in the steamer while making the gravy.

Serve

  1. Cut the chickens as for a fricassee, arrange on a platter, and pour dressing over them 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. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle steaming in moist heat.
Water
Produces the steam that cooks the chickens without direct contact with the pot.

The step that matters

Cover the kettle and steam for 1.5 hours, or until the chickens are tender.. Steam must be kept rising steadily under a tight lid. If the water boils dry or the lid lets steam escape, the chicken cooks unevenly and can stay tough. Checking tenderness at the stated time protects the texture.

“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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