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Braised Chicken

A whole chicken braised with vegetables and salt pork, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braised Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Prepare the chicken for roasting.

  2. Dredge the chicken with flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Brown the chicken all over in hot butter or chicken fat.

Roast

  1. Place the chicken in a roasting pan on a bed of sliced onion, carrot, turnip, and celery.

  2. Cover the chicken with four slices of salt pork.

  3. Add two cups of water and cover closely with another pan.

  4. Roast for three hours, basting often and replenishing the water to keep about two cups in the pan.

Serve

  1. Remove the chicken to a platter.

  2. Garnish with vegetables.

  3. Make a gravy from the liquid in the pan.

  4. Season to taste.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the chicken, helping it brown and thickening the pan liquid into gravy.
Butter or chicken fat
Browns the chicken surface and adds rich flavor to the skin.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor that seasons the chicken as it roasts.
Water
Creates steam and braising liquid that keeps the chicken moist during long cooking.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken all over. Browning in hot fat creates flavorful Maillard browning on the surface. Pale patches add little flavor, and the flour coating needs heat to brown properly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, pepper, butter, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pepper, butter, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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