Skip to main content
Main

Poulet Saute a LA Bowdoin — Chicken Sauted, Bowdoin Fashion

A sautéed whole chicken served in a wine, mushroom, veal stock, and butter sauce, finished with brandy flambé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Poulet Saute a LA Bowdoin — Chicken Sauted, Bowdoin Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in a pan until done, then transfer to another pan and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Moisten the original pan with ⅓ cup white wine and reduce almost dry.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon each of chopped fresh mushrooms and Mirepoix Bordelaise.

  3. Pour in ½ cup rich brown veal stock and reduce to half.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon chicken glace, ¼ teaspoon chopped parsley, 2 ounces sweet butter, and the juice of ½ lemon.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the chicken to the pan, heat well without boiling, and serve in an earthen casserole.

  2. Before serving, pour over a splash of good brandy and ignite.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Is the main protein, cooked first and then returned to the sauce to finish.
White wine
Reduced nearly dry to concentrate its flavour and deglaze the pan.
Brown veal stock
Reduced by half to build a richer, more concentrated body for the sauce.
Sweet butter
Stirred in at the end to enrich the sauce with fat and a smooth, glossy texture.
Chopped fresh mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and savoury depth to the sauce as they cook down.

The step that matters

Return the chicken without boiling. Once the butter is in, a rolling boil can break the emulsified sauce and make it greasy or separated. Gentle heating keeps it smooth and keeps the chicken tender.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, white wine, mushroom, veal, butter, lemon, brandy):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, white wine, mushroom, veal, butter, lemon, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes