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Chicken Baked in Milk

Chicken baked in a milk sauce after browning, seasoned with 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Roll the chicken pieces in flour.

  3. Brown the chicken quickly in a greased skillet.

  4. Transfer the browned chicken to a casserole dish.

Make the milk sauce

  1. In the same skillet, blend 2 tablespoons of flour with the fat.

  2. Slowly add 3 cups of milk, cooking until slightly thickened.

  3. Pour the milk mixture over the chicken.

  4. If the milk does not cover the chicken, add more milk.

Bake

  1. Cook in the oven below the boiling point until the chicken is tender.

  2. Add salt when the chicken is half cooked.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 meat that becomes tender during slow cooking in the milk.
All-purpose flour
Coats the chicken for browning and thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes a thickened sauce and keeps the chicken moist.
Fat
Carries heat for browning the chicken and combines with flour to start the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the milk below a boil. Milk scorches and can curdle or separate when it boils, and the thickened sauce can turn grainy. A gentle oven heat lets the chicken cook slowly and stay tender in a smooth sauce.

“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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