Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Stewed Au Macaroni

A stew of chicken cooked with onion, carrot, celery, and macaroni, finished with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Stewed Au Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and truss the chicken.

  2. Place the butter inside the chicken and cover it with bacon.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, add the chicken, onion, carrot, celery, and enough water to cover the chicken.

  2. Boil slowly for 50 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken on a dish garnished with boiled macaroni.

  2. Pour the cream béchamel sauce over the chicken and macaroni.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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 stew and supplies the meat that is served.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the chicken moist as it cooks.
Bacon fat
Adds savory flavor and fat that helps the chicken stay moist.
Cream béchamel sauce
Adds a smooth, creamy coating that gives richness to the dish.
Macaroni
Provides a starchy base that absorbs the sauce and fills out the plate.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 50 minutes. A gentle simmer keeps the chicken tender and prevents the muscle fibers from tightening and toughening. A hard boil can make the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, onion, celery, cream, sauce):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, celery, cream, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes