Skip to main content
Main

Potted Chicken, Grouse, or Other Birds

A dish of whole or cut bird simmered slowly with onion, salt, pepper, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Potted Chicken, Grouse, or Other Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If the bird is large, cut it into small pieces; otherwise, cook it whole.

  2. In a pan, sauté the bird in a little oil until lightly browned.

Cook

  1. Combine the onion, salt, pepper, brown flour, and water in a jar.

  2. Add the bird to the jar and cook slowly until very tender.

  3. If using raw meat, cook for 4 hours; if using pre-cooked meat, cook for 2 to 2.5 hours.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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 during long, slow cooking.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a rich, smooth sauce around the meat.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until very tender. Gentle, long cooking breaks down connective tissue in the meat, making it tender. Cooking too hot can toughen the muscle fibers and leave the meat dry, so keep the heat low and the jar covered enough to hold moisture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes