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Roast Chicken, with Mushrooms

Roast chicken covered in bacon, served with a mushroom and onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Roast Chicken, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cover the chicken breast with bacon slices.

  3. Roast the chicken for 40 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until browned, then move it to one side of the pan.

  3. Add the flour to the pan and brown it slightly.

  4. Stir in the stock, sweet herbs, and mushrooms, then season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer the mixture slowly for 15 minutes.

  6. Add the sherry to the sauce.

  7. Remove the chicken from the oven, pour off the fat from the dripping tin, and add any gravy to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Garnish the chicken with the mushrooms, strain the sauce, and serve it in a tureen.

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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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; roasting cooks it and renders fat that flavours the gravy.
Flour
Browned in the butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the cooking of the onion and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Cooked until browned to build savoury depth and sweetness in the sauce.
Bacon
Laid over the chicken, its fat bastes the meat and adds savoury flavour.
Sherry
Added near the end to contribute acidity and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked in the fat until lightly browned so it loses its raw taste and thickens evenly; adding stock too early can leave lumps and a pasty flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, mushroom, pepper, sherry. 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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