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Boiled Chickens and Macaroni

A dish of boiled chickens served with macaroni in a seasoned broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Chickens and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chickens

  1. Clean, wash, and stuff the chickens as for roasting. Sew each chicken in a piece of new tarlatan, fitted snugly to the shape.

  2. Boil the chickens in hot water for 12 minutes per pound of the larger chicken.

Make the macaroni

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, remove 1 large cup of broth from the pot and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Season the broth and boil for 5 minutes with the chopped onion.

  3. Strain the broth, then return it to heat and add the broken macaroni.

  4. Cook the macaroni until tender, allowing the broth to be absorbed.

  5. Set the saucepan in another pot containing boiling water to prevent scorching.

Serve

  1. Make a mound of macaroni on a hot dish, place the chickens on top, and drizzle with melted butter and additional salt.

  2. Serve with grated cheese on the side for those who wish.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Chicken + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,936 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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, cooked gently in hot water until tender.
Chicken broth
Cooks the macaroni and carries flavor, moisture, and body into the pasta as it is absorbed.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that absorbs the broth and becomes tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Absorbing the broth into the macaroni. Macaroni must simmer gently in the broth set over boiling water. Too much heat can scorch the bottom and burn the flavor, while stopping too early leaves the pasta firm and the broth unabsorbed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, cheese. 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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