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Roast Chickens

A whole chicken simmered with lemon, herbs, and Béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Roast Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the chicken and rub it with lemon juice.

  2. Wrap the chicken in buttered muslin.

Poach

  1. Place it in a stewpan with the sliced onion, herbs, salt, peppercorns, mace, and enough boiling water to cover.

  2. Bring the water back to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the chicken.

The step that matters

Bring the water back to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer. Simmering keeps the water just below a rolling boil, so the chicken cooks gently. A hard boil toughens the muscle proteins and can break the skin and meat apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, thyme, parsley, lemon, sauce, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, thyme, parsley, lemon, sauce, egg. 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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