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Chicken Qulash

A stew of chicken, tomatoes, onions, and bread simmered with butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Qulash

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then remove it from the pot.

  2. Remove the bones from the chicken, return them to the broth, cook for 30 minutes, then remove the bones from the broth.

  3. Cut the chicken into small pieces, reserving the liver, heart, and gizzard for other uses.

Make the goulash and serve

  1. Add the chicken back into the broth along with tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, sugar, and butter.

  2. Stew until the chicken is fully cooked.

  3. Prepare 12 slices of buttered toast.

  4. Pour the chicken mixture over the toast in a soup tureen and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and rich broth that form the body of the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the stew its tangy, savoury flavour.
Onions
Build sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stew.
Bread
Soaks up the liquid and gives the dish a soft, substantial base.

The step that matters

Stew until the chicken is fully cooked. Simmering gently in the tomato broth lets the meat become tender and absorb flavour. Cooking too hard can toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly, so the stew should be kept at a gentle simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, pepper, sugar, butter, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, pepper, sugar, butter, bread. 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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