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Stewed Chicken

A stew of chicken cooked with butter, flour, beef jelly, sherry, mushrooms, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the salt butter in a stew pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth and light yellow.

Stew the chicken

  1. Add the chicken, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes, turning once.

  2. Add the beef jelly, sherry, and fill the pan with mushrooms.

  3. Cover and simmer for another 30 minutes until ready to serve.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly in butter.
Salt butter
Carries the flavour and gives the flour a rich base to cook into.
Beef jelly
Adds savoury body and gelatin that enriches the braising liquid.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce as it simmers.
Mushrooms
Release their moisture and savoury flavour into the stew as they cook.

The step that matters

Simmering the chicken with the lid on. Gentle, covered simmering keeps the liquid from reducing too fast and lets the connective tissue in the chicken slowly soften, so the meat stays moist and tender rather than dry and tough.

“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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