Skip to main content
Main

Prairie Chickens

A stuffed prairie chicken is steamed, then baked with butter, salt, pepper, and flour, served with apple sauce or jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Prairie Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove all shot from the prairie chickens.

  2. Wash thoroughly in water with some soda, then rinse and dry.

  3. Fill the chickens with dressing and sew them up with cotton thread.

  4. Tie down the legs and wings.

Cook and roast

  1. Place in a steamer over hot water until cooked through.

  2. Transfer to a dripping pan.

  3. Cover with butter.

  4. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  5. Dredge with flour.

  6. Place in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  7. Baste with melted butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with apple sauce, cranberries, or currant jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Prairie chickens
Provide the main meat, which is cooked through by steaming before roasting.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the skin brown and turn golden when basted.
Flour
Dredged on the surface to help the skin brown and crisp in the oven.
Dressing
Fills the birds, adding flavour and moisture to the inside as they cook.

The step that matters

Steaming until cooked through before roasting. The birds must be fully cooked through during steaming, since the oven stage mainly browns the surface. Stuffed birds are dense, so the centre can stay underdone if the steaming is cut short.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes