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Stewed Chicken

Stewed chicken served with a butter and celery gravy over biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pour boiling water over the chicken and add coarse sea salt.

  2. Cook until tender.

  3. Add butter and celery.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. In a quart bowl, mix flour or cornstarch with cream until smooth using a hand mixer.

  2. Pour the boiling broth over the mixture, stirring briskly.

  3. Return the mixture to the kettle and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken with the gravy on hot biscuits.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Chicken
Provides the main meat and the broth that becomes the gravy base.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the cream and broth into a smooth, pourable gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the stewed chicken.

The step that matters

Mixing the thickener into the cream. Starch must be fully smoothed into the cream before hot broth is added, because lumps form when starch meets hot liquid without being dispersed first. Stirring briskly while adding the broth keeps the gravy smooth as the starch hydrates and thickens.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

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