Skip to main content
Main

Chicken with Mushroom Sauce

Chicken simmered in broth with onion and herbs, served with a mushroom sauce made from peeled mushrooms, salt, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Chicken with Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Wrap the chicken in a floured cloth and plunge it into boiling water.

  2. Add an onion and herbs to the water for flavor.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer gently until cooked, about 45 minutes or longer depending on size.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. For the mushroom sauce, peel the mushrooms and sprinkle salt among the gills.

  2. Let the mushrooms sit in a cool place for 2-3 hours to draw out juice.

  3. If needed, add ½ cup boiling water or stock to the mushrooms.

  4. Simmer for a few minutes, season with pepper, and serve over the chicken or separately.

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Salt draws out their juice, which forms the body and flavor of the sauce.
Whole chicken
Gentle simmering cooks the meat until tender and moist.
Flour
A floured cloth coats the chicken, helping protect the skin during poaching.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, not at a hard boil. Keeping the poaching water at a gentle simmer cooks the chicken evenly and keeps the meat tender. A hard boil toughens the proteins and can make the outside overcooked before the center is done.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More chicken with mushroom sauce recipes

Broiled 6 See all 4 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes