Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Chicken

A whole chicken boiled with lemon, onion, celery, herbs, and salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled 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. Rub the outside of the chicken with the cut lemon.

  2. Place the chicken in a well-buttered paper bag.

  3. Add the sliced onion, celery, studded onion, and herbs to the bag.

  4. Pour in the salted water.

  5. Fold the bag and secure it with wire clips or string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the bag on a grid shelf in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1 hour, adjusting time based on the size of the chicken.

  2. Serve the chicken on a hot dish with its 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 in the steam and liquid.
Salted water
Creates steam and cooking liquid that gently moistens the chicken and forms the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the cooking liquid and gravy.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrance that brighten the flavour of the chicken.

The step that matters

Sealing the paper bag. If the bag is not folded and secured tightly, steam escapes and the chicken dries out. A sealed bag traps moisture so the bird cooks gently in its own steam and liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, onion, celery, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, onion, celery, parsley, 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.

More boiled chicken recipes

with Rice 7and Rice 6and Tongue 3Sauce for 3White 3 See all 162 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes