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Spanish Chicken

A roasted chicken served with a cream sauce made from bacon fat, flour, cream, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spanish Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the chicken halves with salt and sprinkle with chopped cloves and Spanish pepper.

  3. Place thin strips of bacon or salt pork over the chicken.

Bake

  1. Bake until the chicken is tender, watching carefully to prevent burning. Add a little water if necessary.

  2. Once tender, remove the chicken from the pan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add flour to the fat left in the pan and stir in cream and water. Cook on the stove for five minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then pour the sauce around the chicken.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Clove + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pork + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Broilers
Provide the meat that becomes tender during slow oven baking.
Flour
Thickens the pan fat and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce as it cooks.
Bacon or salt pork
Melts fat over the chicken, adding moisture and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the pan fat and cream. Flour must be cooked in fat before liquid is added, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Cream can also scorch or curdle if it boils too hard, so keep the heat moderate.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, flour, 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.

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