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Chicken with Artichokes

A chicken stew with artichokes, seasoned with lemon, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken with Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the chicken broth, reserving a little for later.

  2. Add lemon juice, salt, and pepper to the broth.

  3. Add the pieces of chicken and then the artichokes after a minute or two.

  4. Cover and heat thoroughly until boiling.

  5. Stir in the cornstarch blended with the reserved cold broth.

  6. Stir for about 2 minutes and serve.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when heated with liquid.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and keeps the chicken moist.
Artichokes (in the method)
Add their flavor and tender texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornstarch blended with the reserved cold broth. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold liquid first so it disperses evenly; added directly to hot broth it clumps. It then needs to reach a boil and be stirred to thicken fully.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, pepper, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, pepper, sauce. 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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