Skip to main content
Main

Panned Chicken

Panned chicken baked with butter, flour, and gravy made from pan drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Panned Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the chickens in a pan, skin side up.

  3. Rub the chickens with softened butter, then dredge with flour, salt, and pepper.

Roast

  1. Bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes.

  2. Baste with butter and a little hot water.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes, basting three times with no more than ½ cup of water, using the rest as butter.

  4. Remove the chickens to a hot dish.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy from the fat in the pan by adding 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. When browned, add 1 cup of thin cream or white stock.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Butter
Coats the skin, adding fat that promotes browning and keeps the meat moist.
Flour
Dredging forms a coating that helps the skin brown and thickens the pan gravy.
Chickens
Main protein; basting with fat and water keeps the meat moist during roasting.
Thin cream or white stock
Liquid that dissolves the browned pan residue and forms the body of the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or stock to the gravy. Liquid added to a flour-thickened fat must be stirred in gradually over heat, or lumps form. Adding it only once the flour has browned lightly gives the gravy a richer, deeper flavour from the pan drippings.

“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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes