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Brown Buttered Chickens

Brown buttered chicken pieces served over toasted bread with optional mushroom ketchup or fresh mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Brown Buttered Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the roasted chicken into small pieces, dividing the leg and wing joints into two or three parts.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt butter and add flour, stirring to combine.

  2. Add the gravy, nutmeg, lemon juice, and chopped anchovy to the skillet.

  3. Toss the mixture until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken on sippets and drizzle with mushroom ketchup or add fresh mushrooms if desired.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns and adds nutty, rich flavour to the sauce base.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing the melted butter and gravy.
Gravy
Provides the liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury, salty flavour that enriches the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter before liquid is added, so it thickens smoothly without a raw starchy taste. Adding gravy too early or too fast can cause lumps, and the sauce should be tossed only until thickened to avoid breaking or over-reducing.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, nutmeg, anchovy, bread, mushroom):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, nutmeg, anchovy, bread, 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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