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Chicken, with Mushroom Fur4e

Whole chicken boiled with ham and vegetables, served in a cream sauce with mushroom purée and croûtons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chicken, with Mushroom Fur4e

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth and sauce

  1. Boil the chicken trimmings with ham, vegetables, thyme, and parsley in water until reduced to 1 cup.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Mix the strained broth with ½ cup of boiling cream.

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the whole chicken for about 40 minutes, less if small.

  2. Pour the sauce over the boiled chicken.

  3. Thicken the sauce with arrowroot or roux if desired.

Prepare the croûtons and serve

  1. Top the chicken with thick mushroom purée.

  2. Prepare croûtons.

  3. Coat the croûtons with mushroom purée.

  4. Top the croûtons with cooked bacon and liver mixture.

  5. Garnish the chicken with parsley.

  6. Serve the chicken.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Thyme + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the main protein, which firms and becomes tender as it cooks gently in liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Arrowroot or roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken instead of running off.
Mushroom purée
Adds earthy flavour and a thick, smooth texture to the topping.

The step that matters

Boil the whole chicken for about 40 minutes. Boiling too hard or too long toughens the meat and dries it out. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the chicken through while keeping it moist and tender.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, thyme, parsley, cream, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, thyme, parsley, cream, mushroom. 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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