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Chicken Baked in Milk

Chicken baked in milk with cream, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Chicken Baked in Milk

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the chicken pieces in a baking dish.

Add the milk and cream

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk and cream together.

  2. Pour the milk and cream mixture over the chicken.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Bake

  1. Bake until the milk has cooked away and the chicken is tender, about 1 hour.

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 + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 body of the dish and the meat that becomes tender during slow baking.
Milk
Supplies moisture that cooks down while its milk proteins and sugars gradually brown the surface.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture and helps the sauce feel silky.

The step that matters

Bake until the milk has cooked away. The milk must reduce and its proteins and sugars must brown without scorching. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin, while baking too long can dry the chicken and burn the milk solids.

“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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