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Chicken Stew with Vegetables

A hearty stew of whole chickens simmered with butter, flour, corn, lima beans, bacon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Stew with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Place the cleaned and trussed chickens in a stewpan with cold water.

  2. When the water simmers, add the butter and flour mixed until smooth.

  3. Stir in the corn, lima beans, bacon, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Cook and serve

  1. Let the stew cook slowly until the chickens are done.

  2. If the chickens are tough, cook for 2 to 2½ hours, adding vegetables 1 hour before done.

  3. For young chickens, cook for 1 to 1½ hours, depending on size.

  4. Serve the chickens in the center of a dish with vegetables around and sauce in a separate bowl.

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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as they cook slowly in the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavour and giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and tender texture to the stew as it cooks through.
Lima beans
Add starchy body and a mild, creamy texture to the stew.
Bacon
Releases fat and smoky, savoury flavour into the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the stew slowly until the chickens are done. Gentle heat lets connective tissue in the chicken break down slowly, giving tender meat. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can make the sauce cloudy, so keep the liquid at a slow simmer.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, corn, 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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