Katharine Hepburn's Chicken Dish Came With This Unusual Topping

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"Bringing Up Baby." "The Philadelphia Story." "On Golden Pond." Chicken Burgundy-style. If you're a fan, you've perhaps immediately guessed we're naming some of Katharine Hepburn's most famed contributions to our culture. Okay, we'll admit that last one, chicken Burgundy, is a little less renowned than the Hollywood icon's films. However, Hepburn was indeed always known for her love of cooking and entertaining, and there are certain dishes she's especially associated with. 

In 1940, she submitted her chicken Burgundy-style recipe to "Specialites de la Maison," a cookbook compiled to raise money for The American Friends of France, which brought relief and medical attention to French victims of war. "Specialites de la Maison" was republished in 2010, reviving recipes from legends like Salvador Dali, Tallulah Bankhead, Christian Dior, Charlie Chaplin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and, of course, Ms. Hepburn. 

Chicken burgundy-style was one of Katharine Hepburn's favorite dishes. What's notable about the recipe she submitted for the book — aside from the sheer fact that the Oscar winner was also talented in the kitchen — is its toppings: sliced mushrooms and small sour pickles, like cornichons. This dish, often called Burgundy chicken or even poulet Gaston Gérard, was developed in 1930 by Madame Gaston Gérard, wife of the mayor of Dijon in France's Burgundy region. As it spread, the recipe split into many different versions — for example, Hepburn's own preferred method doesn't seem to include the dish's arguable signature of Burgundian wine, and the original certainly doesn't call for a mushroom-and-pickle topping. 

As eccentric as mushrooms and pickles sound for topping a classic French chicken dish, once you read Hepburn's recipe, the flavor and texture components make sense. Her chicken Burgundy-style employs butter, heavy cream, chicken stock, and eggs for simmering chicken and vegetables into hearty, roasty, rich, and creamy results. While there's some lemon juice contributing acidity plus freshness from veggies and herbs, the dish could certainly use a touch more zing and complexity. 

It's easy to imagine the sliced mushrooms harmonizing perfectly with the dish's savoriness, bringing in added earthiness and umami, while the pickles level the overall profile up with a pop of crunch and bright, tart acidity. It sounds strange at first, but Hepburn might have, in fact, been onto something when it comes to balancing chicken Burgundy-style out.

Hepburn was known for having some very specific preferences regarding food — she loved classic, fudgy brownies, for example, but only if they were chewy and never caky. She liked homemade cranberry sauce, but added some unconventional ingredients to that, too, in the way of nuts and raisins. If Hepburn wanted a dish to taste a certain way, she wasn't going to compromise or skip an ingredient just because it wasn't the norm, a kind of creativity and culinary open-mindedness we can get behind. Let this inspire you to try traditional Burgundy chicken with the umami and acidity of mushrooms and pickles, and to add whatever toppings you like to any dish.