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Chickens, a LA Reine

A dish of whole chickens cooked with lemon, butter, parsley, carrot, onion, cloves, and finished with Supreme sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chickens, a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the chickens and rub them with lemon juice.

  2. Wrap each chicken in a sheet of buttered paper.

Poach

  1. Place the chickens in a stewpan with parsley, carrot, and onion stuck with cloves.

  2. Moisten with boiling stock to nearly cover the chickens.

  3. Boil gently for about 40 minutes until done.

  4. Drain the chickens on a napkin, remove the paper and string.

Finish and serve

  1. Dish the chickens side by side and cover with Supreme sauce.

  2. Garnish with small quenelles of fowl and serve.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Spring chickens
Provides the main meat, which gentle poaching cooks until tender and moist.
Butter
Enriches the chickens and adds richness through the buttered paper wrap.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich chicken.
Supreme sauce
Creamy sauce that coats the chickens and adds richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Boil gently for about 40 minutes. A gentle simmer cooks the proteins evenly and keeps the chicken tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and can break it apart.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, butter, parsley, carrot, onion, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, butter, parsley, carrot, onion, 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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