Skip to main content
Main

Chicken

A stew of young chickens with onions, butter, spices, vermicelli, tomato sauce, and egg yolk, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,189 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chickens

  1. Truss the chickens and stuff them with fine bread crumbs, a little butter, a slice of white onion, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  2. Press down the breastbone, skewer the wings, and tie the whole together with the liver and gizzard inside.

Stew

  1. Stew the chickens in a flat enamelled pot with 1½ pints of water, butter, dripping, and onions (cutting two incisions on top).

  2. Turn the chickens breast down and let them simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the spices, add vermicelli and tomato sauce, and stew for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the egg yolk whipped with the white wine, stir into the pot, and pour over the chickens.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Allspice + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body as it sets gently with the warm liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stewing liquid and balances the fat.
Vermicelli
Thickens the stewing liquid slightly as its starch softens during cooking.
White onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if the liquid is too hot or it is added too early. Whisk it with the wine first and add it just before serving, off the boil, to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, butter, allspice, tomato, sauce, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, allspice, tomato, sauce, egg. 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 stew recipes

Spanish 10Prairie 8with Dumplings 7with Biscuits 6with Rice 4 See all 44 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes