Skip to main content
Main

Young Chicken with Cauliflower

A dish of boiled young chicken pieces served with cooked cauliflower and a gravy thickened with flour and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and cauliflower work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Young Chicken with Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. In a pot, boil the chicken pieces in water seasoned with spices and lemon juice.

  2. Thicken the broth with flour and egg yolks.

Cook the cauliflower

  1. Cook the cauliflower in water with salt and butter until tender.

  2. Drain the cauliflower.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken in the center of a dish, surrounded by the cauliflower.

  2. Pour the gravy over everything.

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. Lemon + cauliflowertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Flour + cauliflowertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 protein and flavours the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Cauliflower
Serves as the tender vegetable side that surrounds the chicken.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking water for the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with flour and egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the broth is too hot when they are added. Whisking them in gradually with a little hot broth first, and keeping the heat low, keeps the gravy smooth.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

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

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes