Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Fowls

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with butter, carrots, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Stewed Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and cut the fowl into joints.

Make the stew

  1. In a 6‑pint stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrot and onion, frying for 5 minutes while stirring.

  3. Add the fowl pieces, pepper, and salt, then stir in the flour until well mixed.

  4. Gradually add the stock and broken tomatoes, stirring until it comes to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer.

  6. Add the sliced mushrooms and chopped parsley, bringing it back to a boil.

  7. Simmer for 10 minutes, then skim, baste, and serve.

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

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl or chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the stock.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a light sauce as it cooks and coats the pieces of meat.
Butter
Fats the pan for frying the vegetables and adds richness to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that cooks the meat and becomes the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce and moisture as they break down.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour before the liquid. Stirring flour into the fat and meat before adding stock lets it coat the pieces, which helps prevent lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce when the stock is added gradually.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, carrot, pepper, flour, tomato, mushroom. 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.

More stewed chicken recipes

with Oysters 4with Dumplings 3with Salt Pork 3 See all 64 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes