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Chicken En Casserole

Chicken pieces browned and baked in a casserole with a stock and tomato catsup sauce, carrots, onions, mushrooms and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Colville, Jessie Henderson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken En Casserole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and cut the two large chickens for frying.

  2. Melt and heat two tablespoonfuls of butter and two of salt pork drippings in a pan.

  3. Brown the chickens in the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan.

  2. Rub into the butter two of flour and simmer and stir until smooth.

  3. Add one pint of stock, two small onions cut in small pieces, two carrots cut in pieces, one bay leaf, two tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup, and one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the chicken nicely in a casserole dish and pour the mixture over it.

  2. Cover closely and put in oven for one hour.

  3. Half an hour before serving add a few cut potato balls and one-half pound of fresh mushrooms braised in butter.

  4. Fifteen minutes before serving turn in one can of peas.

  5. Serve from the casserole dish.

By Colville, Jessie Henderson. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning gives colour and flavour, and slow covered baking keeps the meat moist and tender.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps form the smooth base of the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Stock
Liquid that forms the body of the sauce and carries the flavour of the dish.
Tomato catsup
Adds acidity and sweetness that rounds out the savoury sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the casserole.

The step that matters

Rub the flour into the butter and cook until smooth. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly; adding flour without this step leads to lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, mushroom, chicken, onion, tomato):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mushroom, chicken, onion, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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