Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Chicken with Dumplings

A stew of chicken pieces and giblets simmered in water, finished with butter and flour, topped with homemade dumplings.

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

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the chicken pieces and giblets in a stew pan.

  2. Pour boiling water over the chicken and cover the pan.

  3. Cook until the chicken is tender.

  4. Add butter and flour to the stew.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. For the dumplings, mix flour, lard or butter, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add enough ice water to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll the dough thin and cut into squares.

  4. Drop the dumplings into the stew and stir often to prevent sticking.

  5. Once cooked through, serve in a deep platter and season with salt, black pepper, and garnish with 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavor, and its juices enrich the broth as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the stew and forms the stiff dough that makes the dumplings.
Lard or butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dumpling dough.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the stew.

The step that matters

Drop the dumplings into the stew and stir often to prevent sticking. Dumplings are starchy and sink to the bottom of the hot liquid, where they can stick and scorch. Stirring keeps them moving and separated, and gentle simmering lets them cook through without falling apart.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes