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To Stew Chickens in Haste

A quick chicken stew cooked in butter with herbs, flour, cream, egg yolk, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

To Stew Chickens in Haste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chickens.

  2. Cut the chickens into pieces.

  3. Scald the pieces in hot water without letting them cool.

Stew and finish

  1. Fry the chickens in butter with chopped sweet herbs, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Add boiling water and flour.

  3. Stew until the sauce reduces.

  4. Strain the sauce.

  5. Stir in cream and beaten egg yolk.

  6. Squeeze lemon juice over the chickens.

  7. Serve.

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Fresh-killed chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked and served in the stew.
Butter
Fries the chicken pieces, adding richness and browning the surface.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a sauce as it stews and reduces.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in cream and beaten egg yolk.. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Add it off the heat or gently, stirring constantly, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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