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Chicken Brown Stew

A stew of chicken cooked in lard and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Chicken Brown Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Start the base

  1. Heat a flat-bottomed pot on the stove.

  2. Add lard and flour, stirring to combine.

Simmer the stew

  1. Add chicken and enough water to cover.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Simmer until chicken is cooked through.

  4. Add vegetables if desired and cook until tender.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + chickentop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and chicken barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lard
Provides fat that carries flavor and helps the flour blend into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as its starch swells with heat.
Chicken
Supplies the main protein, which firms and becomes tender as it cooks through.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the lard. Flour stirred into fat coats its starch granules, so they disperse instead of clumping when water is added. Heat then swells the starch and thickens the stew.

“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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