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Braised Chicken

Braised chicken cooked with pork fat, carrots, onions, herbs, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Dress, clean, and truss the chicken.

  2. In a pan, render the fat from the pork, then remove scraps.

  3. Add carrots, onion, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf to the fat; cook for 10 minutes.

Brown the chicken

  1. Add butter and fry the chicken, turning often until browned.

Braise and serve

  1. Place the chicken on a trivet in a deep pan, pour over the fat, and add boiling water or stock.

  2. Cover and bake at 300°F (150°C) until tender, basting often and adding more water if needed.

  3. Serve with a sauce made from the stock in the pan, strained and fat removed.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it braises slowly.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavour and is used to brown the chicken.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the chicken, promoting browning and a rich flavour.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the cooking fat and the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the fat.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken in butter. Turning often until evenly browned builds colour through the Maillard reaction, which adds flavour to the chicken and the sauce made from the pan liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, carrot, thyme, parsley, butter, pepper. 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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