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Chickens a-LA-Braze

Larded chickens are stewed on a bed of veal, bacon, and beef, then served with a ragout of sweetbreads, mushrooms, and artichoke bottoms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,147 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Lard the chickens and season with pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. In a deep stew-pan, layer veal, bacon, onion, carrot, and beef.

  3. Place the chickens breast down and add a bundle of sweet herbs.

  4. Cover with another layer of beef and add broth or water.

Braise

  1. Cover tightly and stew gently for 1 hour.

Make the ragout and sauce

  1. Prepare the ragout by stewing sweetbreads, cockscombs, truffles, and ox-palate with a little broth or water.

  2. Once the chickens are done, keep them warm and strain the cooking liquid.

  3. Skim off the fat and add it to the ragout along with red wine, ketchup, and mushrooms.

  4. Boil the ragout with artichoke bottoms and asparagus tops.

  5. If the sauce is thin, thicken it with butter rolled in flour.

Serve

  1. Serve the chickens on a dish and pour the ragout over them. Garnish with lemon.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chicken + beeftop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,147 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 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 body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the braising liquid.
Sweetbreads
Add a rich, tender texture to the ragout as they cook gently in liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the ragout sauce as it reduces.
Butter and flour
Thicken the sauce, giving it body and a smooth, coating texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury, smoky flavour to the braising base.

The step that matters

Stew the chickens gently and tightly covered. Gentle, covered stewing keeps the heat low and the moisture trapped, so the meat becomes tender without drying out or toughening. Boiling hard would toughen the proteins and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, veal, onion, carrot, beef, truffle):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, veal, onion, carrot, beef, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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