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Stuffed Chicken

Chickens stuffed with a milk and breadcrumb mixture, roasted with bacon, served with a sauce of butter, flour, stock, vinegar, anchovy, capers, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stuffed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stuffing

  1. Combine milk and bread crumbs in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until thick.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Beat the cooled mixture in a mortar with parsley, green onions, thyme, bay leaf, salt, pepper, butter, and egg yolks.

Stuff and roast the chickens

  1. Stuff the mixture into the prepared chickens.

  2. Sew the chickens closed.

  3. Roast the chickens between rashers of bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter for the sauce.

  2. Mix the melted butter with flour.

  3. Add stock, vinegar, anchovy, capers, salt, and nutmeg to the sauce.

  4. Thicken the sauce over heat.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together and enrich its texture as they set.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form a thick paste that gives the stuffing body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter so the sauce becomes smooth and cohesive.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying its savory flavor.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny note that balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce over heat. Flour must be cooked with the fat and liquid long enough to swell and set, or the sauce stays thin and tastes raw-floury. Keep it moving to avoid lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter, egg. 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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