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Stewed Chickens

A stew made from chicken pieces simmered with salt, pepper, flour, and water, optionally enriched with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the chickens: separate the thighs from the lower legs, cut the breast into six parts, cut the wings in two parts, and the back into four pieces.

  2. Place the chicken pieces in a stew pan with the salt, pepper, and flour. Stir well.

  3. Add the water.

Stew and finish

  1. Let the mixture stew until the chicken is tender.

  2. If the gravy is not thick enough, add a little flour mixed with water.

  3. If using early fall chickens, add ¼ pound of butter to make a rich gravy.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 cooking liquid into a gravy as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy when used with early fall chickens.
Chickens
Provide the meat that becomes tender through slow stewing.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew until the chicken is tender. Slow, moist heat breaks down connective tissue in the chicken, so it turns tender. Stopping early leaves meat tough, and the gravy may stay thin if the flour has not had time to thicken the liquid.

“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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