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Chicken Stew

A stew made with whole chicken, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings, served over toast or with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe the chicken.

  2. Draw the chicken.

  3. Wash the chicken.

  4. Cut the chicken into serving pieces.

  5. Cover the chicken with boiling water.

  6. Add salt and pepper.

  7. Simmer until tender.

  8. Remove large bones.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

  2. Gradually add cold milk, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add chicken broth gradually.

  4. Season with additional salt, pepper, and celery salt.

Serve

  1. Place the chicken on toast on a large platter.

  2. Pour the hot sauce over the chicken and toast.

  3. If serving dumplings, boil the liquid 10 minutes before the chicken is done. Add dumplings.

  4. Serve.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Whole chicken
Provides the meat and the flavorful broth that the stew is built on.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base for the flour roux.
Cold milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce once whisked into the roux.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk gradually and keep stirring. Adding cold milk all at once to a hot roux can leave lumps. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, flour, milk. 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 chicken stew recipes

Spanish 10Prairie 8with Dumplings 7with Biscuits 6with Rice 4 See all 44 →

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