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Chickens

Chickens stuffed with a forcemeat of bread, herbs, and lemon, then larded and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chickens

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing the French rolls, minced onion, parsley, thyme, grated lemon peel, a little butter, and the egg.

  2. Stuff the chickens with the forcemeat and lard them.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the chickens and place a piece of fat on the breasts to prevent over-browning.

  2. In a stewpan, melt 1 oz. of butter and place the chickens inside, leaving them uncovered for a short time.

  3. Bake the chickens for 1.5 hours, basting with a little milk half an hour before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Form the main body of the dish, with the forcemeat and fat keeping the meat moist.
Lardoons
Add fat that bastes the meat from within and keeps the lean chicken moist.
French rolls
Provide bulk and structure to the forcemeat stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that promotes browning and flavour.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together when stuffed and baked.

The step that matters

Place the fat on the breasts. Breast meat is lean and dries out quickly, and it also browns faster than the rest of the bird. A covering of fat shields it from over-browning and helps keep it moist during the long bake.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, butter, milk, egg, parsley, thyme):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, milk, egg, parsley, thyme. 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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