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Chicken Stew

A stew of disjointed chicken cooked with a stiff dough of flour, lard, and salt, finished with sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Chicken Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cover the disjointed chicken with cold water and add salt.

  2. Cook until tender.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and lard.

  2. Add enough water to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll the dough very thin and cut it into small strips.

  4. Sprinkle with flour.

Finish the stew

  1. Add the strips to the chicken.

  2. Cook all together for 30 minutes or longer.

  3. Add sweet milk when nearly done.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavour in the broth as it cooks until tender.
All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff dough that sets into tender strips in the stew.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the dough short and tender.
Sweet milk
Adds richness and a mild sweetness to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Add the sweet milk when nearly done. Milk can curdle or scorch if boiled for a long time, so it is added near the end to keep it smooth and mild.

“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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