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Boiled Chickens

A simple boiled chicken dish seasoned with salt, served with optional stuffing and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the chickens thoroughly.

  2. Place the chickens in a pot and cover them with boiling water.

  3. Add more water if it boils away to keep the chickens submerged.

  4. Season the water with coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Tie kitchen twine around the chickens to maintain their shape.

Boil the chickens

  1. Boil until the chickens are tender, then remove from the pot.

Stuff and serve

  1. For stuffing, mix bread crumbs, butter, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Fill the chickens with the stuffing, truss them, and tie with twine.

  3. Serve the boiled chickens with rich egg sauce.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the water.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist and flavourful.
Onion
Adds aroma and a mild sweetness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Keep the chickens fully submerged while boiling. Parts of the birds left above the water cook unevenly and can dry out or stay underdone, so the water must cover them throughout the boil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, bread. 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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