Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Chicken, Mushroom Sauce

Broiled chicken served with a mushroom sauce made from sautéed mushrooms, butter, flour, broth, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Chicken, Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Broil the chicken

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. Broil the chicken until cooked through, about 20-30 minutes.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt butter and sauté mushrooms until tender.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add chicken broth, stirring until thickened.

  4. Add lemon juice and serve sauce over the broiled 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and body of the dish, cooked by dry heat under the broiler.
Mushrooms
Soften as they cook, releasing moisture and savory flavor into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps sauté the mushrooms and carry their flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with the hot broth to form a smooth body.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory depth as it thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add chicken broth, stirring until thickened. Adding broth slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, mushroom, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes