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Boiled Chicken, with Egg Sauce

A boiled chicken stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs, served with a sauce made from chicken stock, butter, flour, beaten eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Chicken, with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stuff the chicken with bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, and thyme.

  2. Tie a buttered paper around the chicken.

  3. Place the chicken in a kettle of warm water and cover closely.

Make the egg sauce

  1. Once cooked, remove the chicken and reserve the cooking liquid.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 1 cup of the chicken liquid with butter and flour to thicken.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and boil for one minute.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley and season to taste.

  5. Place the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  6. Pour the sauce over them and stir.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with the chicken.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and, cooked gently in water, becomes tender and juicy.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices inside the cavity and add moisture and body to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set into the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Their yolks are mashed with the sauce, adding richness and a thick, custardy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the sauce. Eggs set when heated, so the sauce must be hot enough to cook them smoothly; boiling them for one minute ensures they thicken rather than curdle or stay runny.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, pepper, butter, flour, egg, parsley. 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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