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Boiled Chicken

A whole chicken boiled with salt, flour, bay leaf, rice, and optional celery or capers, served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Clean, stuff, and truss the chicken as for roasting.

  2. Dredge the chicken with salt and flour.

Simmer

  1. Place the chicken in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Add the bay leaf and washed rice.

  3. Cover the pot and simmer until tender, about 30 minutes per pound.

Serve

  1. Once done, lay the chicken on a hot platter and serve with brown sauce, adding chopped celery or capers if desired.

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

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

  2. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Dredging the chicken lightly coats the surface and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Washed rice
Releases starch into the cooking liquid, adding body to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard keeps the meat tender and prevents the skin and fibers from toughening. Covering the pot holds steady heat so the chicken cooks evenly through.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, rice, sauce):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, rice, sauce. 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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