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To Pull Chickens

A dish of shredded chicken cooked in a butter and flour thickened gravy with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Pull Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin and pull the flesh off the bone of the cold fowl in large pieces.

  2. Dredge the pieces in flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the pieces in butter until nicely browned.

  2. Drain the butter and simmer the flesh in good gravy, well seasoned.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, then add the juice of half a lemon.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fowl
Provides the meat that is pulled apart and simmered until tender.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown in the butter and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fries the coated pieces to a golden brown and enriches the thickened gravy.
Good gravy
Moistens the chicken during simmering and carries the seasoning through the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the gravy and butter.

The step that matters

Frying the dredged pieces until nicely browned. Flour and butter brown through the Maillard reaction, which gives flavour and colour. Pieces that are pale or greasy have not browned properly, and draining the butter before simmering keeps the gravy from becoming oily.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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