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Chicken a LA Maryland

A boiled chicken dish simmered with onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, and tomatoes, served with toast points or fried bread baskets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Maryland

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken and remove the head and legs.

  2. Place the chicken in a pot of warm water, enough to cover it.

  3. Add the sliced onion, carrot, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, and celery.

  4. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender.

  5. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into two-inch pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Reduce the stock down to one cup.

  2. Heat the stock and strain it.

  3. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  4. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  5. Slowly stir in the cup of stock.

  6. Add the crushed tomatoes and chicken.

  7. Cook for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve surrounded by toast points or in fried bread baskets.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow cooking in water.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, concentrated by reduction for more flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, body and color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the stock into the roux. Adding liquid to a hot roux too quickly, or without stirring, can leave lumps. Adding the stock slowly while stirring lets the flour starch disperse evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, celery, butter, flour, tomato. 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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