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To Braise Chickens

A braised chicken dish cooked with bacon, herbs, mace, stock, and sherry, finished with a brown mushroom fricassee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Braise Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Place poultry trimmings in a stewpan and lay the chickens on top.

  2. Add onions, herbs, mace, stock, and sherry.

  3. Cover the chickens with bacon slices and white paper, sealing tightly.

  4. Cook on low heat for 2 hours.

  5. Remove the chickens.

Make the glaze

  1. Strain the braise.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Boil the braise quickly until it thickens to a glaze.

Glaze and serve

  1. Brush the glaze over the chickens.

  2. Place the chickens in the oven for a few minutes to brown.

  3. Serve with a brown fricassee of mushrooms.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Thyme + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Form the main body of the dish, holding the forcemeat as they cook gently.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and flavor that moistens the chicken during the long, covered braise.
Stock
Provides the liquid base for the braise, keeping the chicken moist and building the glaze.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor to the braise and resulting glaze.

The step that matters

Boil the braise quickly until it thickens to a glaze. Reducing the strained braise concentrates its gelatin and flavor. Boiling too gently or too long can leave it thin or make it too salty, so watch it closely until it coats a spoon.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, thyme, parsley, sherry. 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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