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Chicken Stew with Vegetables

A stew of whole chickens simmered with butter, flour, corn, lima beans, bacon, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Stew with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and truss the chickens as directed.

  2. Place the chickens in a stewpan with cold water.

Make the stew

  1. When it simmers, add the butter and flour mixed until smooth.

  2. Add the corn, lima beans, bacon, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.

  3. Let everything stew slowly until done.

  4. If the chickens are tough, they will need 2 to 2.5 hours; add vegetables 1 hour before they are done.

  5. If using young chickens, they will need 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on size.

Serve

  1. Serve the chickens in the center of the dish with vegetables around and sauce in a separate bowl.

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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and, as they cook, flavour the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it softens.
Lima beans
Add starchy body and a mild, earthy flavour to the stew.
Bacon
Contributes smoky, savoury fat that flavours the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the simmering liquid. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed; blending it smooth with the butter first lets it disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, corn, 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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