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Stewed Prairie Chickens

A stew of prairie chickens cooked with stock, gravy, lemon juice, doves, pepper, salt, tomato sauce, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Prairie Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chickens as you would for roasting.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with stock or water and cold gravy.

  3. Add lemon juice, doves, black pepper, and salt.

Stew and serve

  1. After a while, stir in the tomato sauce.

  2. Stew slowly for about 2 hours.

  3. Serve with a little tomato ketchup mixed into the sauce, thickened with butter and flour.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Prairie chickens
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce with butter.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and savory depth to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly for about 2 hours. Low, gentle heat breaks down connective tissue in the meat, making it tender. Boiling hard can toughen the proteins and leave the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, tomato, sauce, butter, flour, ketchup. 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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