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Stewed Chicken

Stewed chicken made by boiling and simmering chicken pieces with salt and optional milk for gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut off the legs and separate at the joint into drumstick and second joint.

  2. Cut off the wings and remove the tips; repeat on the other side.

  3. Separate the wishbone with the meat from the breast; cut through the ribs to separate the breast from the back.

  4. Cut the back crosswise in the middle and cut the side bones apart lengthwise.

  5. You should have ten pieces. Cook the neck and wing tips with the giblets.

Stew and finish

  1. Cover the chicken pieces with boiling water and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer until tender, adding 3 tablespoons of salt after the first half hour.

  3. Once tender, remove the chicken pieces and keep warm.

  4. If the stock is less than 3 cups, add water or milk to achieve the desired amount.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavorful during long, gentle simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and stock as it simmers, flavoring the chicken from within.

The step that matters

Adding the salt after the first half hour. Salt added to simmering meat seasons it gradually and helps it stay moist. Adding it after the initial boil lets the proteins firm less abruptly, so the salt is absorbed evenly rather than tightening the surface too early.

“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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