Skip to main content
Main

‘Capillotade’ of Chicken-legs

A stew of cooked chicken legs simmered in wine, gravy, and butter, finished with Madeira and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

‘Capillotade’ of Chicken-legs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and braise

  1. Trim the chicken legs and arrange them in a flat stewpan.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper, shallots, and diced mushrooms.

  3. Moisten with white wine and gravy, then bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and keep warm with hot embers on the lid or in a slack oven.

Finish the sauce

  1. Once hot, thicken the cooking stock with kneaded butter and add Madeira.

  2. Boil the sauce for 10 minutes, then stir in chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken legs on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, and alternate with fried bread crusts.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken legs
Form the main body of the dish, gently reheated so they stay moist in the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that builds the flavor base of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy depth that rounds out the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the meat.
Kneaded butter
Thickens the cooking liquid into a glossy sauce that clings to the chicken.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and a caramelised, aromatic note to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with kneaded butter. Kneaded butter is flour and butter worked together; it must be whisked into the hot stock in small pieces, or it clumps. Once the starch grains are dispersed and the sauce simmers, the starch swells and thickens it evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, shallot, mushroom, white wine, butter, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, shallot, mushroom, white wine, butter, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes