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Chicken a LA Maryland

A chicken stew simmered with onion, carrot, turnip, celery, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, and tomatoes, served with toast or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Chicken a LA Maryland

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Clean the chicken, removing the head and legs.

  2. Place the chicken in a pot of warm water to cover.

  3. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, and celery.

  4. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender.

  5. Remove the meat from the bones.

  6. Cut the chicken into two-inch pieces.

  7. Cook the stock down to 1 cup.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir until smooth.

  3. Slowly stir in the cup of stock.

  4. Stir in the strained tomatoes.

  5. Add the chicken and cook for 10 minutes.

  6. Serve surrounded by points of toast or in fried bread baskets or timbale cases.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering in the stock.
Butter
Melted fat that carries the flour and gives the sauce a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fruity flavour to the sauce and give it colour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until smooth. Flour added to melted butter must be stirred so the starch coats each grain of fat before liquid goes in. Adding stock slowly while stirring prevents lumps, because starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unevenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour. 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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