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A simple chicken stew cooked in lard with onions, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken 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 ↓

Meats and Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the base

  1. In a large pot, heat lard over medium heat.

  2. Add chopped onions and stir constantly until they are quite brown.

Cook the stew

  1. Add the jointed chicken and stir well.

  2. Pour in enough water to cover the chicken.

  3. Cover the pot and let it cook slowly until dinner.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning develops deep, sweet flavor as they cook down in the fat.
Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered cooking in liquid.
Lard
Fat that conducts heat for browning the onions and carries flavor through the stew.

The step that matters

Stir the onions constantly until quite brown. Onions can scorch on the bottom of the pot before they brown evenly. Constant stirring spreads the heat, and the browning reactions between sugars and proteins build the stew's deep flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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