Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Chicken

A roasted chicken dish with bacon, tomatoes, peas, mushrooms, carrots, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom 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 ↓

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

  2. Place the cut-up chicken in a roasting pan and season with salt and pepper.

Roast the chicken

  1. Fry the bacon and onion in a skillet until brown, then add to the chicken.

  2. Add the tomatoes, water, and red pepper or paprika to the pan.

  3. Roast the chicken until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy and thicken it with a mixture of flour and water.

  2. Add the peas, mushrooms, and cooked carrots to the gravy and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the gravy over the chicken and serve.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

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 becomes tender during slow roasting in the pan.
Bacon
Its rendered fat adds savory flavor and richness to the dish.
Onion
Browning softens its sharpness and adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, helping form the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells with heat and liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour and water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before it goes into the hot liquid, or it clumps. Starch swells and thickens the gravy only once it is heated, so it needs to be stirred and brought to a simmer.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, onion, tomato, mushroom, carrot, flour):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, onion, tomato, mushroom, carrot, flour. 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 spanish chicken recipes

Stew 10 See all 13 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes