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Chicken with Mushrooms

A creamy chicken dish with mushrooms cooked in a butter, flour, milk, and mushroom liquor sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chicken with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler over boiling water.

  2. Whisk in the flour, milk, and mushroom liquor until smooth.

Cook the chicken and mushrooms

  1. Add the chicken and cook for 3 minutes.

  2. Stir in the mushrooms and cook for an additional 2 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Slowly add the egg yolks while stirring continuously.

  2. Continue stirring until the sauce is a pale creamy yellow, about 2 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor while the flour is cooked in.
Flour
Thickens the milk and liquor into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set with stirring.
Chicken or turkey
Provides the main protein and body of the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot or they are added without stirring. Adding them slowly while stirring continuously tempers them, so the sauce thickens smoothly and stays creamy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, butter, flour, milk, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, butter, flour, milk, egg. 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.

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