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Boiled Chicken

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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, clove-stuck onion, and herbs.

  4. Pour in the salted water.

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

Bake 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 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 moist heat.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the cooking liquid that becomes the gravy.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma to the chicken's skin and surrounding liquid.

The step that matters

Securing the paper bag. If the bag is not folded and sealed tightly, steam escapes and the liquid reduces, so the chicken can dry out. A closed bag keeps moisture around the meat as it cooks gently in the oven.

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.

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