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Boiled Chickens, Bechemel Sauce

Boiled chickens served with a béchamel sauce made from milk, roux, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Chickens, Bechemel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Place half an onion, half a carrot, a small piece of celery, a pinch of sugar, and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt in a large stewpan.

  2. Prick the chickens all over the breast with a needle and lay them in the stewpan.

  3. Cover the chickens with boiling water and boil steadily for 30-60 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, combine 1 pint of milk, a piece of onion, a piece of carrot, a piece of celery, a blade of mace, seasoning, and enough roux to thicken.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Add ½ cup of cream to the sauce and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked chickens in a hot dish, remove any skewers, and wipe away moisture with a clean napkin.

  2. Pour a little sauce over the chickens and garnish with lemon slices and green parsley.

  3. Serve the remaining sauce in a separate dish.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
The main protein, cooked gently in boiling water until tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens with roux.
Roux
Flour and fat mixture that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with roux. Roux must be fully incorporated and the sauce brought to a boil so the starch swells and thickens evenly. Adding it too little or stirring poorly leaves lumps or a thin sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, onion, carrot, celery, cream, sugar):

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, onion, carrot, celery, cream, sugar. 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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