Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Stew with Biscuit

A stew of boiled chicken served with buttered biscuits topped with thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Stew with Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken as you would for fricassee.

  2. Remove the chicken and heat butter in a frying pan.

  3. Add the chicken to the pan and brown on both sides.

  4. Transfer the chicken to a platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour the gravy from the kettle into the frying pan.

  2. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  3. Thicken the gravy.

Assemble and serve

  1. Break open the cream biscuits on the platter.

  2. Butter each half of the biscuits.

  3. Pour the gravy over the biscuits.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

  4. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Chicken + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the stew, with browning adding savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and browning the chicken, and richness to the biscuits.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and savory flavor, thickened to coat the biscuits.
Cream biscuits
Soak up the thickened gravy, serving as the base for the dish.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy. Gravy must be simmered long enough for starch to gelatinize and thicken; too thin and it will soak into the biscuits rather than coat them.

“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