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Stewed Cbickes

A simple stew of chicken pieces simmered in water with salt, pepper, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Cbickes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the chickens thoroughly and cut them into pieces at the joints.

  2. Wash the pieces and season them with salt and pepper.

Stew

  1. Place the chicken in a stew pot with 1½ cups of water over low heat.

  2. Once it begins to simmer, stir in 2 tablespoons of flour mixed with 2 ounces of butter.

  3. Cook until the chicken is tender, adjusting seasoning if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a heated 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. 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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Chicken
Slow simmering in liquid makes the meat tender and gives the stew its body.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and smooths the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and butter once the liquid simmers. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not mixed in well; blending the flour with butter first helps it disperse and thicken evenly without lumps.

“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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