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Chicken Stew with Biscuit

A chicken stew served with buttered cream biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Stew with Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken as you would for fricassee.

  2. Remove the chicken and place it in a frying pan with butter.

  3. Brown the chicken on both sides, then transfer to a platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour the gravy from the kettle into the frying pan and bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the gravy.

Serve

  1. Break open the cream biscuits on the platter, butter each half, and pour the gravy over them.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

  4. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Chicken + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 and, once browned, a savoury flavour for the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the chicken and richness to the biscuits.
Cream biscuits
Soft, absorbent base that soaks up the gravy when served.
Gravy
Moist, thickened sauce that coats the chicken and biscuits.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy. Gravy thickens as starch granules swell when heated in liquid and then cooled slightly. If it is not brought to a full boil and held there briefly, starch will not fully gelatinise and the gravy stays thin and watery.

“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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