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Smothered Chicken

Smothered chicken is a baked dish of young chickens seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Smothered Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Dress the chickens and wash them.

  2. Soak the chickens in water for 30 minutes to whiten them.

  3. Cut the chickens open at the back and place them in a baking pan.

  4. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the chickens and add lumps of butter.

Bake

  1. Cover the pan tightly with another pan of the same size.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour, basting often with butter.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Young chickens
Provide the main protein, which cooks through in the covered pan and becomes tender.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and browns as it bastes the chicken during baking.

The step that matters

Basting often with butter. Basting keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly. Covering the pan traps steam, so the chicken can dry out or turn pale if juices are not spooned back over it during the hour in the oven.

“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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