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Braised Chicken

A whole chicken braised with carrots, onion, turnip, celery, parsley, salt pork, and boiled water, finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In the bottom of a roaster, layer the carrot, onion, turnip, celery, parsley, and salt pork.

  3. Place the trussed chicken on top of the vegetables.

  4. Pour the boiling water over the chicken and cover tightly.

Braise

  1. Cook for 25 minutes per pound, or longer if the chicken is tough.

  2. Baste the chicken once when it is half done.

  3. Rub the chicken with butter.

  4. Dredge the chicken with flour to brown.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Keep the chicken hot.

  2. Strain the gravy through a colander.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. Serve in a boat.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries into the vegetables and gravy.
Onion
Builds savory aroma and sweetness as it softens during the braise.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the braising liquid and gravy.
Flour
Browns on the chicken's surface and later thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the skin brown and gives a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Dredge the chicken with flour to brown. Flour on the surface helps the skin brown through the Maillard reaction, but it can scorch if the oven is too hot or the flour is left too long at high heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, pork, chicken, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, pork, chicken, 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.

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