Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Chicken

A simple chicken stew made with whole chicken pieces, water, butter, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. Place the chicken pieces in a stew pan.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Add 4 cups of water and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  4. Stew for 1.5 hours.

  5. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. If there is no gravy, add another tablespoon of butter, some water, and flour.

  2. Boil for a few minutes until slightly thickened.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 protein and releases flavour and gelatin into the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stewing liquid and the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour needs to be heated in the liquid for a few minutes so its starch swells and thickens the gravy. Stopping too early leaves a thin, starchy-tasting sauce.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

More stewed chicken recipes

with Oysters 4with Dumplings 3with Salt Pork 3 See all 64 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes