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Prairie Chicken Steamed

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Prairie Chicken Steamed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Remove all shot from the prairie chicken and wash it quickly with a little baking soda in the water.

  2. Rinse and dry the chicken.

  3. Fill the chicken with dressing and sew it up with cotton thread, tying down the legs and wings.

  4. Place the chicken in a steamer over hot water until cooked through.

  5. Transfer the chicken to a dripping pan, cover with butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  6. Dredge the chicken with flour and place it in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  7. Baste with melted butter until the chicken is nicely browned.

  8. Serve with apple sauce, cranberries, or currant jelly.

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. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the currant

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

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, flour, apple, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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