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Chickens Pulled

Pulled chicken is shredded chicken cooked in gravy and butter, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chickens Pulled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the cold chicken.

  2. Pull the flesh from the bones, keeping it as whole as possible.

  3. Flour the chicken pieces well.

  4. Fry them in fresh butter until nicely browned.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the chicken in a well-seasoned gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy shortly before serving with flour and butter.

  3. Add the juice of half a lemon before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns well and thickens the gravy.
Fresh butter
Fat for frying that browns the floured chicken and adds richness.
Good gravy
Moist liquid in which the chicken stews, keeping the meat tender.
Juice of ½ lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and butter.

The step that matters

Frying the floured chicken in butter. Butter browns at a lower temperature than oil and can burn if the pan is too hot. Dry, well-floured pieces brown evenly rather than steaming, giving flavour and colour before the stew.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, 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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