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Chicken a LA Tarragon

A chicken stuffed with tarragon, butter, and seasonings, braised with bacon, carrots, onions, and herbs, served with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Tarragon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Mix chopped tarragon with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the chicken, sew up the vent, and truss the chicken.

  3. Place the bacon slice over the chicken breast.

Cook

  1. Put the chicken in a saucepan and add enough water to not quite cover it.

  2. Add salt, carrots, onions, clove, and tarragon stems.

  3. Cook until the chicken is tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove half the cooking water, thicken it with flour and butter, and reduce until it reaches a good consistency.

  2. Serve the chicken without the bacon, garnished with finely chopped tarragon leaves and the sauce around it.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Butter
Enriches the stuffing and, with flour, thickens the sauce for a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when cooked with butter.
Bacon
Lays over the breast to add fat and moisture as the chicken cooks.
Tarragon
Provides the herbal aroma that defines the dish, in both the stuffing and the garnish.

The step that matters

Keep the water below the chicken's top. Adding just enough water to not quite cover the chicken lets the exposed upper part cook gently with steam while the submerged part poaches. Too much water dilutes the cooking liquid used for the sauce and slows reduction.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chicken, pepper, butter, carrot, clove, flour. 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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