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Brunswick Stew

A stew of chicken, corn, lima beans, tomatoes, butter, pepper, salt, and sugar simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chickens into pieces and place them in a deep pot with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Cook until the chickens are thoroughly done, then remove them from the pot, leaving the water.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the corn, lima beans, and tomatoes in separate bowls.

  2. Cut the corn from the cob and season it with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Season the lima beans and tomatoes the same way, adding a little sugar to the tomatoes.

Simmer and serve

  1. Return the chicken and vegetables to the pot and cook until thick enough to eat with a fork, adding water if necessary.

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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which cooks in the water to make the broth.
Corn
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it simmers.
Lima beans
Add starch that helps thicken the stew as it cooks down.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that give the stew its body and flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until thick enough to eat with a fork. Long simmering lets the starches in the corn and lima beans break down and thicken the liquid. Stopping too early leaves a thin broth, and adding too much water dilutes the flavor and slows thickening.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, corn, tomato, butter, pepper, sugar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Lima beansthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, corn, tomato, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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