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To Pull Chickens

A dish of cold chicken pulled from the bone, fried in butter, then simmered in seasoned gravy with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Pull Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the cold fowl.

  2. Pull the flesh off the bone in large pieces.

  3. Dredge the pieces in flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the pieces in butter until nicely browned.

  2. Drain the butter.

  3. Simmer the flesh in well-seasoned gravy thickened with a little flour and butter.

  4. Add the juice of half a lemon.

Alternative method

  1. For an alternative method, cut off the legs and back of a dressed chicken.

  2. Pull the white meat into small flakes, free from skin.

  3. Toss the flakes with cream thickened with butter and flour, mace, white pepper, and salt.

  4. Cut off the neck-end of the chicken.

  5. Broil the back and sides in one piece.

  6. Season the legs.

  7. Place the hash in the center, with the back on top and the two legs at the end.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flour
Forms a light coating on the chicken that browns when fried and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fries the chicken to a golden brown and, with flour, thickens the gravy and cream.
Gravy
Keeps the pulled flesh moist and carries the seasoning through the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the flaked chicken.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the rich gravy and cream.

The step that matters

Frying the dredged pieces in butter. Flour-dredged chicken fried in hot butter browns through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour. If the butter is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, lemon, cream, mace. 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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