Skip to main content
Main

Roast and Boiled Chickens

A whole chicken boiled in water, served with caper or pickle sauce, with the broth saved for soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,513 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast and Boiled Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Cook

  1. Add the whole chicken to the boiling water.

  2. Ensure the water continues to boil until the chicken is fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken with caper or pickle sauce poured over it.

  2. Save the boiling water for making soup.

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. Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
The main protein, which cooks through gently in the boiling water to become tender.
Caper or pickle sauce
Adds acidity and a sharp, salty tang that cuts the richness of the mild boiled chicken.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a full boil until the chicken is cooked. A steady rolling boil keeps the water hot enough to cook the chicken through evenly. When the water cools or stops boiling, cooking slows and the chicken can end up unevenly done, so it is best to keep the heat up until it is fully cooked.

“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 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes