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Stewed Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken pieces served in a butter‑flour gravy, finished with egg yolk and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the chicken

  1. Wash and clean the chicken, then cut it into pieces.

  2. Cook the chicken in boiling salted water until nearly done.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and add the flour, stirring to combine.

  2. Add some of the cooking gravy to the pot and the chicken pieces, then boil until fully cooked.

  3. Remove the chicken from the pot and stir the beaten egg yolk into the gravy.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the chicken and serve with cooked rice around the dish.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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, which firms and becomes tender as it cooks in the liquid.
Butter
Carries flavour and richness and helps form the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and thickens the gravy slightly when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk into the gravy. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring it in off the heat, with the gravy no longer boiling, helps keep the sauce smooth and glossy.

“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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