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Breaded Chicken

Breaded chicken pieces baked with butter, water, and a milk or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Breaded Chicken

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breaded Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Dip each piece of chicken into beaten eggs, then coat with bread crumbs twice.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Bake

  1. Place chicken in a large baking pan, adding a lump of butter on each piece.

  2. Pour in ½ cup of hot water and bake at 300°F (150°C), basting often until cooked through.

  3. Transfer chicken to a hot platter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the baking pan, combine 1 cup of rich milk or cream with 1 cup of bread crumbs.

  2. Stir well and cook until thickened, then pour over 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein that is cooked through by slow baking with basting.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the chicken so the coating adheres during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating and thicken the milk or cream into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the coating brown in the oven.
Rich milk or cream
Combines with bread crumbs in the pan to form a thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Basting until cooked through. Frequent basting with the butter and hot water keeps the surface moist while the chicken cooks slowly at a low oven temperature, so the interior reaches doneness without drying out. Cooking at a low temperature also needs patience, since the centre of thick pieces takes longer to reach a safe temperature.

“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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