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Roast Chicken, with Mushrooms

Roast chicken covered with bacon, served with a mushroom sauce made from butter, onion, flour, stock, herbs, and sherry.

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.

Roast the chicken

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

  2. Cover the chicken with bacon slices.

  3. Roast the chicken for 40 minutes.

  4. Remove the chicken from the oven.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter and brown the sliced onion.

  2. Move the onion to one side and add the flour to brown it.

  3. Stir in the stock, sweet herbs, and mushrooms.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer the sauce slowly for 15 minutes.

  6. Add sherry.

  7. Pour off the fat from the dripping tin.

  8. Add any gravy to the sauce.

  9. Strain the sauce.

Serve

  1. Garnish the chicken with mushrooms.

  2. 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
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies the meat and drippings for the gravy.
Bacon
Covers the chicken, releasing fat that bastes the meat and adds savoury flavour as it roasts.
Butter
Carries the onion's browning and adds richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce and garnish the chicken.

The step that matters

Browning the flour with the onion. Cooking the flour in the butter until it browns removes its raw taste and builds colour and nutty flavour. If it is not cooked this step, the sauce will taste pasty and be pale.

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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