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Boiled Chicken

A boiled chicken served with a sauce of butter, onion, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pluck and draw the chicken, singe it, and wipe it with a wet towel.

  2. Cut off the head and feet, then cut the chicken into small pieces.

  3. Place the chicken in a kettle and cover it with water, adding salt and pepper.

  4. Boil the chicken until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, fry the sliced onion in butter until white.

  2. Add the milk thickened with flour and remaining butter, mixing well.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then boil until thickened.

  4. Strain the sauce through a sieve and pour it over the chicken on a platter.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Pepper + oniontop 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which turns tender and moist when simmered in water.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it creaminess and body as it thickens.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats and boils.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flavour of the frying onion.
Onion
Adds savoury, sweet aroma as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Add the milk thickened with flour. Flour must be blended in smoothly and the sauce kept mixing while it heats, or lumps form. Boiling then thickens the sauce as starch swells.

Swap the onion

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

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

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