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Chicken Sandwiches

Chicken sandwiches made with tender shredded chicken in a creamy sauce, served hot between buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Steam the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones, discard the skin, and chop the meat finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, blend the butter and flour, then add the milk and stir until smooth.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  3. Stir in the chopped chicken and heat thoroughly, then set aside to cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Trim the crusts from the bread slices and butter them.

  2. Spread the chicken mixture between the slices and toast on both sides.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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 the bulk of the sandwich filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds flavor and richness to the bread.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that binds the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Bread
Holds the filling and browns when toasted, adding texture and crispness.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until smooth before adding the chicken. Flour must be fully blended into the butter and milk to avoid lumps. Whisking while the sauce heats lets starch granules hydrate evenly, giving a smooth, thick texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

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