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, Casserole of
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and brown
Divide the chicken into neat joints.
Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a casserole large enough to hold the chicken and fry the bacon strips until crispy.
Add the chicken, shallot, and mushrooms to the casserole, cover, and cook slowly.
Turn the chicken pieces over and brown both sides.
Simmer and thicken
Add stock to barely cover the chicken and season with salt and pepper.
Knead the flour and remaining tablespoon of butter together.
Add the mixture in small pieces about 15 minutes before serving.
Serve
Serve the chicken in the casserole or transfer to a hot dish.
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.
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Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,172 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
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Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,982 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,081 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Chicken
- Forms the main body of the dish and releases juices that flavour the stock.
- All-purpose flour
- Kneaded with butter and added at the end to thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps brown the chicken and bacon in the casserole.
- Streaky bacon
- Renders fat and savoury flavour into the pan for frying and browning the chicken.
The step that matters
Adding the flour and butter mixture. Adding flour in small pieces near the end, rather than all at once, prevents lumps and lets the sauce thicken evenly as it simmers.
Swap the shallot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, mushroom, flour, pepper):
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Shallotthe original
- Potatofits about as well
- Spinachfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, mushroom, flour, 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.
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