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Boiled Chicken Stuffed with Onions

A boiled chicken stuffed with parboiled onions, served in a sauce made from the cooking liquid and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken Stuffed with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and truss the chicken as for roasting.

  2. Parboil the small white onions in 1 quart of milk.

  3. Fill the chicken with the parboiled onions.

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the giblets with 1 small onion and bacon or ham until done.

  2. Strain the giblet broth into a saucepan (you should have at least 1 pint).

  3. Add the stuffed chicken to the saucepan, cover, and simmer until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the milk used for parboiling, add 3 large onions and reduce by half.

  2. Thicken the reduced milk with butter and flour rubbed to a smooth paste.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and cook until thickened.

  4. Pour the sauce over the chicken on a platter and 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Milk
Reduces to a creamy base that becomes the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the reduced milk into a smooth sauce when cooked.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps the flour thicken it smoothly.
3 large onions
Soften in the milk, sweetening and flavouring the sauce as it reduces.
Small white onions
Parboiled and stuffed into the chicken, becoming tender and flavourful.

The step that matters

Thicken the reduced milk with butter and flour rubbed to a smooth paste. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid to swell its starch and thicken the sauce. If it is added in lumps or not cooked long enough, the sauce stays grainy or floury-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, ham, butter, flour, 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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