Skip to main content
Main

Braised Chicken

A whole chicken braised with vegetables, salt pork, herbs, and spices, finished with a butter‑flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Truss the chicken into a good shape for roasting.

  2. In a pot, combine diced carrot, turnip, onion, celery, and salt pork.

  3. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables and add more salt pork over the breast.

  4. Add parsley, bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, salt, and hot water.

Braise

  1. Cover tightly and simmer for 3 hours, adding more water if steam escapes.

Brown and finish

  1. Rub butter over the chicken breast and dredge with flour.

  2. Place in a 400°F oven for a few minutes to brown.

  3. Strain the braising liquid, season to taste, and thicken if necessary with butter and flour.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 meat, which becomes tender during the long, moist braise.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the braising liquid and the chicken.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavor to the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor that builds the base of the braising liquid.
Flour
Dredged on the chicken and used to thicken the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the lid tight during the 3-hour simmer. Braising relies on trapped steam to keep the chicken moist and tender over a long cook; if steam escapes, the liquid reduces and the meat can dry out, which is why the step says to add water as needed.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, pork, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, pork, 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.

More braised chicken recipes

with Tomatoes 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes