Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fowls or Chickens

A method of boiling whole chickens, optionally wrapped in flour, lemon, and buttered paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,092 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Boiled Fowls or Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose chickens that are not black-legged for better color.

  2. Pick, draw, singe, wash, and truss the chickens without the livers in the wings.

  3. Cut off the neck, leaving enough skin to skewer it back.

  4. Cut the feet off to the first joint and tuck the stumps into slits on each side of the belly.

  5. Twist the wings over the back and secure them with a skewer through the body.

  6. Make a slit in the apron of the chicken and tie a string on the tops of the legs to keep them in place.

Boil

  1. Place the trussed chickens in a large pot with plenty of hot water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil and remove any scum that rises.

  3. Simmer gently until the chickens are tender, remembering that slower cooking yields plumper, whiter meat.

Finish

  1. Optionally, wrap the chickens in a floured cloth with lemon slices on the breast and cover with buttered paper.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender and white during gentle simmering.
Water
Cooks the chicken evenly through gentle moist heat.
Flour
Forms a cloth wrapping that protects the surface of the chicken during cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A rolling boil toughens and dries the meat, while slow simmering keeps proteins tender and juicy, which is why the chickens stay plump and white.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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.

More boiled chicken recipes

with Rice 7and Rice 6and Tongue 3Sauce for 3White 3 See all 162 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes