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Chili Colorad

A chicken stew with pepper pods, parsley, onions, butter, flour, and salt, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chili Colorad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Cook the chicken pieces in a pot until nearly done.

  2. Add chopped parsley and onions to the chicken.

  3. Remove seeds from the pepper pods and pour boiling water over them. Steam the pepper pods for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Drain the water and rub the pods in a sieve to extract the juice.

  5. Add the pepper juice to the chicken and let it cook for 30 minutes.

  6. Stir in a little butter, flour, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of rice around the dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as the stew simmers.
Large pepper pods
Supply the colour, flavour and body of the chili sauce once their juice is extracted.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by gelatinising with the liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Onions
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without being mixed with butter or a little liquid first. Stirring it in evenly lets starch granules hydrate and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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