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Turkey or Chicken with Mushrooms

A creamy sauce of butter, flour, milk, broth, and egg yolks served over sliced chicken or turkey with mushrooms.

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 ↓

Turkey or Chicken with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk and chicken broth.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the sliced chicken or turkey and cook for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the mushrooms, salt, and pepper, and cook for 2 minutes more.

  3. Slowly add the beaten egg yolks while stirring continuously.

  4. Serve immediately when the sauce is creamy.

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour and helps form the base of the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce along with the broth.
Cold cooked chicken or turkey
Provides the main protein of the dish.

The step that matters

Slowly add the beaten egg yolks while stirring continuously. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Adding them slowly while stirring lets them blend in and thicken the sauce smoothly.

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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