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Boiled Chicken

A whole chicken stuffed with bread dressing, boiled in salted water with vinegar, then thickened into gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,258 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stuff the chicken with rich bread dressing.

  2. Sew it up in a thin cloth.

Boil and make gravy

  1. Place the chicken in salted boiling water with 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  2. Boil until tender.

  3. Remove some of the water.

  4. Thicken the remaining liquid into gravy.

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 + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  2. Bread + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,672 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Chicken + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it simmers.
Rich bread dressing
Fills the cavity, absorbing juices from the chicken and adding savory flavor and softness.
Vinegar
Adds a small acidic note to the cooking water.

“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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