Skip to main content
Main

Chicken, with Tarragon Sauce

A whole chicken cooked with butter, salt, pepper, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chicken, with Tarragon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the chicken and cook until golden brown on all sides.

  4. Sprinkle tarragon over the chicken and cook until fully cooked through.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chicken + tarragontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together619 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Tarragon + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Butter
Carries heat evenly across the pan and adds richness and browning.
Tarragon
Adds a distinct aniseed-like aroma that flavours the chicken.

The step that matters

Cook the chicken until golden brown on all sides. Searing over medium heat builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or moving the chicken too early traps moisture, so the skin steams instead of browning.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Tarragonthe original

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

You might also like

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