Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Chicken

Boiled chicken stuffed with oysters, breadcrumbs, parsley, butter, pepper, and salt, served with oyster sauce or butter and garnished with hard‑boiled eggs and parsley.

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

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the chicken with oysters, bread crumbs, parsley, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Roll the chicken in a floured cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the chicken in a pot of cold water with the head of celery and ½ cup of water.

  2. Boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with oyster sauce or plain drawn butter.

  4. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs and curled parsley.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked gently in simmering water until tender.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor to the bread stuffing as they cook inside the bird.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and butter in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and to the drawn butter served alongside.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 1.5 hours. A gentle simmer cooks the chicken and stuffing through while keeping the meat tender. A hard, rapid boil can toughen the muscle fibers and break up the stuffing.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, oyster, bread, parsley, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, oyster, bread, parsley, butter, pepper, egg. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes