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Chicken with Macaroni

A stew of chicken and macaroni cooked together with buttered onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Stew the chicken until cooked.

  2. Cool the chicken and remove the meat from the bones.

  3. Cut the meat into fine pieces.

Cook the macaroni

  1. In a separate pot, stew the macaroni until tender.

Combine and serve

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat and brown the onion slices.

  2. Add the chicken to the pan and mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the macaroni and heat everything together until warmed through.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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 and meaty body of the stew.
Macaroni
Adds starchy bulk and a tender, chewy texture to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the browned onion.
Onion
Browns in the butter to add sweetness and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Browning the onion slices. Onions turn sweet and savoury only when their sugars brown gradually over medium heat. Rushing the heat or stopping early leaves them pale and sharp-tasting, flavouring the whole stew less well.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter. 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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