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Chicken Saute

A chicken dish sautéed with butter, flour, sweet cream, lemon juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Saute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Crack the main bones of the chicken quarters with a potato masher or meat pounder and flatten them slightly.

  2. Place the chicken in a frying pan and pour melted butter over it. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the pan and cook over high heat until browned on both sides.

Make the gravy

  1. Drain most of the butter, sprinkle flour over the chicken, and mix well.

  2. Pour sweet cream over the chicken, shake the pan to combine, and cover tightly.

  3. Let it stew slowly for 10 minutes.

  4. Transfer the chicken to a hot platter.

  5. Add butter and lemon juice to the gravy in the pan, shake well over the heat, and pour over the chicken.

  6. Garnish with finely chopped parsley and serve hot.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; browning and slow stewing make it tender and flavorful.
Butter
Fat for browning the chicken and enriching the finished gravy with richness and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy when combined with fat and liquid.
Sweet cream
Adds liquid and richness, forming a creamy sauce as it stews with the chicken.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Cover the pan and cook over high heat until browned on both sides. Browning the chicken in fat builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Cooking too gently or without enough surface contact leaves it pale and less flavorful. Covering can trap steam, so the skin may soften rather than crisp.

“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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