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Chicken and Chestnuts

A savory stew of chicken, pork, and chestnuts simmered in a butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken and Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chicken and pork, cooking until they are light brown.

  3. Remove the chicken and pork, then whisk in the flour to thicken the butter.

  4. Return the chicken and pork to the saucepan, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Simmer

  1. Add the force-meat balls and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Stir in the roasted chestnuts and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Forms the cooking fat and, once whisked with flour, the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a smooth base that coats the chicken and pork.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a soft, mealy texture as they simmer into the dish.
Pork
Browns in the butter and adds savoury richness to the liquid.

The step that matters

Whisking in the flour. Flour added to hot butter must be whisked smoothly, or it clumps. Cooking it briefly in the fat removes raw flour taste and lets it thicken evenly when liquid is added.

Swap the chestnut

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

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