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Smothered Chicken

A whole chicken is seasoned, buttered, covered, and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Smothered Chicken

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.

Prepare

  1. Dress the chickens and wash them.

  2. Soak the chickens in water for 30 minutes to make them white.

  3. Cut the chickens open at the back and place them in a baking pan.

  4. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the chickens and add lumps of butter.

Bake

  1. Cover the pan tightly with another pan of the same size.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour, basting often with butter.

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

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

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
The main protein, which the covered baking cooks through while keeping the meat tender.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and helps the surface brown while basting.

The step that matters

Cover the pan tightly and baste often. The covered pan traps steam, and the butter basting adds fat, which together help keep the chicken moist during the long bake. If the cover is loose or basting is skipped, the meat can dry out.

“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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