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Chickens Pulled

Pulled chicken stewed in gravy with flour, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chickens Pulled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the cold chicken.

  2. Pull the flesh from the bones, keeping it as whole as possible.

  3. Coat the chicken pieces in flour.

  4. Fry the coated chicken pieces in fresh butter until golden brown.

  5. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the chicken in well-seasoned gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy shortly before serving with flour and butter.

  3. Add the juice of half a lemon.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which is pulled into pieces and stewed until tender.
Flour
Coats the chicken for a golden crust and later thickens the gravy.
Fresh butter
Fries the coated chicken to browning and adds richness to the thickened gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and gravy flavours.

The step that matters

Frying the coated chicken until golden brown. Flour and butter brown through the Maillard reaction and form a flavourful crust. Pale or underdone coating gives a dull taste and a weaker base for the gravy, so it needs watching while it colours.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, butter. 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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