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Chicken Boiled

A boiled chicken served with a sauce made from cooking liquid, flour, butter, egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the prepared chicken in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  2. Cover the saucepan and cook slowly for 1.5 to 3 hours, depending on the chicken's age and toughness.

  3. Once tender, keep the chicken warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1 pint of the cooking liquid with 1 tablespoon of flour and 2 tablespoons of butter until smooth.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream.

  3. Add a little lemon juice to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken with a border of rice or mashed potatoes.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, adding richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the sauce, rounding out its flavour.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks into the sauce off the heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they go in, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat first lets them thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, butter, egg, cream, lemon, rice):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, butter, egg, cream, lemon, rice. 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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