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Chicken Saute

A stew of chicken, tomatoes, olives, and mushrooms simmered for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chicken Saute

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the chicken until it falls off the bones.

  2. Remove all the meat and chop it.

  3. Return the chopped meat to the cooking liquid.

  4. Add the chopped tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, and seasoning.

  5. Simmer for three hours.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 and, as it stews, flavours the cooking liquid that becomes the stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, giving the stew a bright, savoury base.
Mushrooms
Add savoury depth and a meaty texture that softens during simmering.
Olives
Add a salty, briny note that balances the richness of the chicken.

The step that matters

Simmer for three hours. A long, gentle simmer lets collagen in the chicken break down and the flavours blend. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and make the liquid cloudy, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Spinachfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, mushroom, pepper. 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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