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Boiled Chicken

A whole chicken boiled with salt, butter, pepper, and optional stuffing, served with white sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the chicken firmly and optionally tie it in cheesecloth to maintain its shape.

  2. Stuff the chicken if desired, using boiled rice seasoned with butter, pepper, and salt, or small pieces of celery.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the chicken in boiling salted water and simmer for 20 minutes per pound.

  2. Once cooked, carefully remove the cheesecloth and cords.

  3. Spread a little white sauce over the breast and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  4. Garnish with parsley and serve with egg, oyster, or Béarnaise 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Whole chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and firm as it simmers gently in water.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the seasoned rice used for stuffing.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating over the breast meat.

The step that matters

Simmering the chicken gently. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer, rather than a hard boil, cooks the meat evenly and keeps the proteins tender and the skin from breaking apart.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, sauce, egg. 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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