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Virginia Smothered Chicken, Cream Gravy

A chicken smothered in a wine and lemon flavored cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Virginia Smothered Chicken, Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut down each side of the backbone of the chicken and remove the bone and internal organs.

  2. Wash and wipe the chicken, then place it on a rack in a baking pan with 1 cup of hot water.

Bake and carve

  1. Bake until beginning to brown, basting frequently.

  2. Once browned, cut the chicken into slices parallel to the backbone.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, mix a little cornstarch with cold water and stir into the liquid in the pan; cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Add wine and lemon juice to the gravy before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, which browns and firms as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Thickens the pan liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring cornstarch into the pan liquid. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water first so it disperses evenly; added dry or to hot liquid it clumps. It then needs to simmer to fully thicken and lose its raw starchy taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, wine, 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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