Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Stew

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in milk or cream, thickened with flour, seasoned with butter, pepper, and sea salt, served with biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into small pieces.

  2. Boil the chicken until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate bowl, mix flour with milk or cream to create a thickening agent.

  2. Season the chicken with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Prepare baking powder biscuits and break them in halves.

  2. Pour some gravy over the biscuits and reserve the rest to serve with the chicken on a platter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a gravy that coats the chicken and biscuits.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding richness and body when thickened.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the seasoned chicken.
Baking powder biscuits
Serve as a soft base that soaks up the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be mixed smoothly into the milk or cream before it heats, otherwise it forms lumps. Starch thickens the liquid as it warms, so the gravy needs time and gentle stirring to reach an even, smooth texture.

“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.

More chicken stew recipes

Spanish 10Prairie 8with Dumplings 7with Biscuits 6with Rice 4 See all 44 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes