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Stewed Chicken with Cream

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in butter, flour, spices, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken with Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into narrow strips.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour, pepper, salt, and mace to the melted butter.

  3. Pour a few spoonfuls of chicken stock into the mixture.

  4. Stir in the cream and add the chicken strips.

  5. Simmer for a few moments 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Chicken stock
Provides liquid and savory depth to the sauce.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and simmering. Once the cream goes in, the sauce should be kept at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Strong heat can cause dairy to separate and turn grainy, and the flour-thickened sauce needs only a brief simmer to heat through and thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

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