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Spring Chicken

Roasted chicken stuffed with minced vegetables, seasoned with salt and paprika, served with hot cream sauce and garnished with fried hominy and sweet potato croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spring Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Split the chickens down the back and lay them breast down in a baking pan.

  2. Fill the cavity with minced onion, carrot, celery, and peas.

  3. Season with salt and paprika, and add 2 tablespoons of butter for each chicken.

  4. Pour ½ cup of hot water mixed with 2 tablespoons of mushroom catsup into the pan.

Roast

  1. Cook in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 30 minutes, basting frequently until vegetables are tender.

  2. Remove the vegetables and turn the chickens to brown the breasts slightly.

Serve

  1. Serve covered with a sauce made from the vegetables moistened with a little hot cream.

  2. Garnish with tiny squares of fried hominy and sweet potato croquettes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which cooks through in the hot oven while the skin browns.
Onion, carrot, and celery
Flavour the pan juices and cavity, then soften into the base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the meat and helps the skin brown.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury depth to the pan liquid and helps colour the drippings.
Hot cream
Adds richness and smooths the vegetable sauce served over the chicken.

The step that matters

Turning the chickens to brown the breasts. Breast meat cooks faster and dries out easily, so turning it out of the liquid only briefly lets the skin brown without overcooking the lean meat.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, carrot, celery, butter, mushroom, cream):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, celery, butter, mushroom, cream. 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.

More spring chicken recipes

Fried 14Broiled 12Baked 8Stewed Whole 5Roasted 3 See all 10 →

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