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Chicken Stewed Au Macaroni

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

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

  1. Clean and truss the fowl.

  2. Place the butter inside the fowl and cover it with fat bacon.

Simmer

  1. In a stewpan, add the fowl, onion, carrot, and celery.

  2. Cover with water and boil slowly for 50 minutes.

Serve

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

  2. Pour the cream béchamel sauce over the fowl 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main cooked meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fowl as it cooks.
Fat bacon
Covers the fowl, adding fat that bastes the meat and flavours the broth.
Macaroni
Adds starchy bulk that soaks up the savoury cooking liquid and sauce.
Cream béchamel sauce
Adds creamy richness and smooth body that coats the fowl and macaroni.

The step that matters

Cover with water and boil slowly for 50 minutes. Water must just cover the fowl and the heat stays low; a hard boil toughens the meat and breaks up the fat, while gentle simmering keeps the flesh tender and the broth clear.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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