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Chicken Stew with Dumplings

A chicken stew simmered with onions, carrots, turnip, and butter, finished with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chicken as for fricassee and place it in a stewpan with cold water.

  2. Bring the stew to a boil.

Make the vegetable base

  1. Add the vegetables with 1 tablespoon of butter and fry until browned but not burned.

  2. Add a few tablespoons of boiling water to the vegetables, cover, and stew until tender.

  3. Mash the vegetables through a strainer into the saucepan with the chicken.

  4. Simmer gently until the chicken is tender.

Add dumplings and serve

  1. Bring the stew to a brisk boil.

  2. Drop in the dumplings (see separate recipe).

  3. Cover the saucepan and boil rapidly for 10 to 12 minutes.

  4. Remove the dumplings from the stew.

  5. Keep the dumplings warm while you dish the chicken.

  6. Pour the gravy over the chicken.

  7. Place the dumplings around the dish.

  8. Serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and, as it simmers, flavours the stock that becomes the gravy.
Onion
Fried until browned, it adds savoury sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Carrot
Softened and mashed into the stew, it adds sweetness and body to the gravy.
Turnip
Softened and mashed into the stew, it adds body and a mild earthy flavour to the gravy.
Butter
Fat used to fry the vegetables, helping them brown and adding richness.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until browned but not burned. Browning builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, but burnt sugars and proteins turn bitter and can taint the whole gravy. Keep the heat moderate and stir often.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, butter, 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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