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A LA Carmelite

A chicken stew with butter, flour, milk, parsley, lemon, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Dredge in the flour and mix well.

  3. Add the milk and stir until combined.

Stew the chicken

  1. Add the cut-up chickens, peppercorns, onion, and mace.

  2. Stew until the chickens are tender, adding milk and water if too dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the chickens and mix the boiled parsley with lemon juice and white pepper.

  2. Place the parsley mixture on the chickens.

  3. Strain and thicken the sauce, then add the white wine.

  4. Serve garnished with chopped parsley and lemon or pickles.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

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

  3. Mace + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Walnut + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Milk + chickentop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries flavour and gives the sauce richness as the base for the roux.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce and keeps the chicken moist while it stews.
Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the parsley and the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stew until the chickens are tender, adding milk and water if too dry.. Gentle, slow simmering breaks down connective tissue so the meat becomes tender. If the liquid reduces too far, the meat dries out and the sauce can scorch on the pan base, so topping up with liquid keeps both moist.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, walnut, flour, milk, chicken, onion, parsley):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, flour, milk, chicken, onion, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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