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Smothered Chicken

A whole chicken cooked in a pan with water, then coated with olive oil and flour, and basted with its own drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,888 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Smothered Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the chicken down the back after plucking, singeing, and wiping it with a wet towel.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the chicken in a dripping pan with hot water.

  2. Cook the chicken in the oven until tender.

  3. Mix olive oil and flour to a smooth paste.

  4. Spread the paste over the chicken when it begins to brown.

  5. Baste the chicken every ten minutes with the drippings from the pan.

Finish

  1. Remove the chicken from the pan.

  2. Keep the chicken hot while making the 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 + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  2. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow oven cooking in moist heat.
Olive oil
Adds fat that helps the flour paste brown and carries flavor across the chicken's surface.
Flour
Mixed with oil into a paste that thickens the drippings and helps the skin brown.

The step that matters

Spreading the paste at the right moment. Spread the flour and oil paste only once the chicken begins to brown. Applied too early, the paste can burn before the bird is cooked; applied too late, it will not brown evenly.

“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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