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Poulet Braise Au Macaroni

A braised chicken served with macaroni in a butter sauce, optionally with tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,031 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Poulet Braise Au Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe, draw, clean, and truss the chicken as for roasting.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  3. Add the chicken and turn until golden brown on all sides.

Braise and cook the macaroni

  1. Braise the chicken for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 2 hours, depending on its age.

  2. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes until tender, then drain.

  3. Remove the chicken to a hot dish and strain the sauce.

  4. Return the sauce to the heat, add the macaroni, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Dish the macaroni around the chicken, pour some sauce over it, and serve the rest separately.

  2. For better color and flavor, add the tomatoes to the sauce while cooking.

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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning and flavor from searing, and tender meat from slow braising.
Butter
Fat that helps the chicken brown evenly in the pan.
Macaroni
Starch that absorbs the sauce and gives the dish its body.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and color to the sauce, optional.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken until golden on all sides. Searing creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale chicken skipped or rushed through this step yields a duller sauce and less developed flavor.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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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