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Prairie Chickens Stewed Whole

Stewed whole prairie chickens with butter, flour, ketchup, and water, served with sauce and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Prairie Chickens Stewed Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Skin the birds, remove the heads and feet, and draw them without breaking the intestines.

  2. Truss the birds to make them short and plump.

Brown and stew

  1. In a large saucepan, melt enough butter to prevent burning and brown the birds.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of dry flour for each bird and stir until the flour is brown.

  3. Add ⅓ cup of tomato ketchup for each bird and enough boiling water to cover them.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

  5. Cook slowly for 2 hours or until the birds are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the birds with their sauce and plain boiled 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Prairie chickens
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Fat for browning the birds, adding color and savory flavor before stewing.
Dry flour
Browned with the fat to thicken the sauce and add a nutty flavor.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, flavoring and coloring the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be stirred until it is evenly browned in the butter; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while over-browned flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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