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Pulled Chickens

A stew of pulled chicken pieces simmered in a sauce of boiling liquid, cream, butter, flour, spices, parsley, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pulled Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until they are half cooked.

  2. Remove the skin and pull the flesh from the bones into pieces about 1 inch wide and ½ inch long.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Mix the boiling liquid with the boiling cream in a stew pan.

  2. Add the butter rolled in flour, pepper, salt, nutmeg, chopped parsley, and white wine.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and stew slowly until fully cooked.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter and flour
Flour rolled into butter thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly cohesive sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a silky, smooth texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich cream sauce.

The step that matters

Add the butter rolled in flour. Flour needs fat and heat to be stirred into the hot liquid without clumping. Dropping it in as lumps or adding it to a liquid that is not hot enough can leave floury specks or uneven thickening.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, white wine. 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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