Skip to main content
Main

Smothered Chicken

Smothered Chicken is a dish of chicken cooked in a butter and water gravy with boiled egg, parsley, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Smothered Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and split the chickens down the back.

  2. Place them in a dripping pan.

Cook

  1. Stir the butter into the boiling water and pour it over the chickens.

  2. Cover with another pan and cook until tender and evenly browned.

  3. Baste the chickens with the gravy four times and with melted butter twice towards the end.

  4. Transfer the chickens to a warm serving dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt, pepper, chopped boiled egg, minced parsley, and browned flour to the gravy.

  2. Bring the gravy to a boil and pour half over the chicken, serving the rest in a gravy boat.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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, which becomes tender while cooking covered in steam and gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the chicken brown and gives the gravy a rounded flavour.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Boiled egg
Adds body and a soft texture to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cover with another pan and cook until tender and evenly browned. Covering traps steam so the chicken cooks through and softens, while the open drippings and repeated basting brown the surface. Too little heat or too little basting leaves the meat dry or pale.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, egg, flour. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes