Skip to main content
Main

A Very Good Sauce for Boiled Chickens

A sauce made from boiled chicken parts, veal or mutton, mace, peppercorns, anchovy, celery, herbs, lemon peel, butter, flour, mushrooms, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Very Good Sauce for Boiled Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine chicken legs, necks, veal or mutton, mace, peppercorns, anchovy, celery, sweet herbs, and lemon peel.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and boil until reduced to ½ pint.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken with ¼ pound of butter and some flour, then boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of mushrooms.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with 1 teacup of cream, then stir the beaten mixture into the sauce.

  4. Keep stirring over low heat until near boiling.

  5. Serve in a sauce-tureen.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

Chicken legs and necks
Provide the main meaty flavour and body for the stock that becomes the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the sauce when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk and cream mixture into the sauce. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce gets too hot. Stirring constantly over low heat, only until near boiling, keeps the sauce smooth while the yolks thicken it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, anchovy, celery, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, anchovy, celery, lemon, butter, 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 chicken sauce recipes

Roasted 3 See all 15 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes