Oven meal: Company Chicken, Oven-Fried Potatoes, Buttered Carrots, Chocolate Brownie Pie

It is 1959, and Indianapolis Power & Light wants to make sure you can cook... electrically. Thus, The Electric Cook Book, "your complete guide to cooking electrically." During the 40's and 50's, with the rise of larger and better-equipped ovens, came The Oven Meal. Oven meals are menus wherein all the dishes are put in the oven at the same time. Genius. Plus, I got to use the divided dish I borrowed from the 50's.

Company Chicken
Oven-Fried Potatoes
Buttered Carrots
Chocolate Brownie Pie
***
Temperature: 350 degrees F.
Time: 50 minutes
Serves: 6

Company Chicken
1 package EACH frozen chicken breasts and thighs
Flour, salt, and pepper
Shortening
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1 4-ounce can sliced mushrooms

Flour and season chicken. In skillet, brown thoroughly on all sides in shortening on SECOND to THIRD heat. Place chicken in large casserole. Add soup to pan in which chicken was fried; stir to pick up drippings. Add curry and mushrooms. Pour over chicken; cover and bake.

Oven-Fried Potatoes
Pare 6 potatoes; slice 1/4 inch thick; toss in 1/2 cup melted butter to coat thoroughly. Put in baking dish; salt and pepper; pour remaining butter over potatoes. Bake.

Buttered Carrots
Peel and slice carrots into casserole. Salt and pepper, top with butter, add 1/4 cup water. Cover, and bake.

Chocolate Brownie Pie
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
3/4 cup pecans
1 9-inch unbaked pastry shell

Melt chocolate and butter [I used a microwave, about 15 seconds at a time]. Add eggs, sugar, and corn syrup, beating thoroughly. Mix in pecans. Pour filling into unbaked pastry shell. Bake with oven meal.

***

Verdict:

Company Chicken: Ehhhh. The sauce is really not great. Canned mushrooms are rubbery and horrible and they JUST TASTE BAD. That, combined with undiluted, curried cream of chicken soup was just overwhelming and gloppy. It's okay, certainly entirely edible, but not something I'd serve to company. Or again. Husband thought it was reasonably tasty.

Oven-Fried Potatoes: Quite nice! Very simple ingredients, tasty result. The butter was a little excessive (not that I mind...), and I think you could get good results from halving the butter, using olive oil, or going 50/50. They were cooked perfectly.

Buttered Carrots: Also cooked perfectly. Yum. I think I liked these the best, actually, with the exception of...

Chocolate Brownie Pie: Golly. I thought this was going to turn out like a chocolate pecan pie as there is no flour in the filling, but I was wrong. This is like... brownies distilled. Husband felt that it was more like brownies than brownies. I would not go quite that far, but it is not "brownies in a superfluous pastry crust", as you are thinking. It is essence of brownie contained by pastry for easier transport to your face. Warm from the oven, thanks to your skillful time management made easier by the wonders of electricity, vanilla ice cream melting in slowly trickling rivulets. ggghgghhhhrrrrrghhh.

All together: A meal well worth making for the novelty and convenience of making it all at the same time in the oven, if you alter the chicken recipe. If I did this again, I'd either rub some chicken thighs with a tasty seasoning mix or figure out a sauce that didn't involve cream of chicken soup. An actual curry sauce, perhaps.