Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Chickens and Tongue

A dish of boiled chickens and tongue served with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Chickens and Tongue

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the chicken and tongue

  1. Clean, wash, and truss the chickens, tying the legs and wings closely with clean lace or mosquito net.

  2. Place the chickens in plenty of boiling salted water and cook for 1 hour, or longer if they are large and tough.

  3. Soak the tongue in warm water for several hours, then boil, skim, and trim it.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the tongue on a dish with a chicken on each side.

  2. Pour melted butter mixed with chopped parsley over the chickens and tongue.

  3. Set the dish in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3 minutes.

  4. Anoint again with butter and parsley before serving on a hot, clean dish.

  5. Serve with a boat of drawn butter.

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

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 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

Chickens
Form the main dish; long boiling cooks them through and firms the meat.
Tongue
A tough cut that needs long soaking and boiling to become tender enough to eat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the meat with fat for a smooth finish.

The step that matters

Boiling the chickens. Chickens must cook fully through in plenty of boiling water. Large or tough birds need the extra time, because heat takes longer to reach the centre of thick meat and tendon.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter. 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