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Chicken Sandwiches

A sandwich made with chopped cooked chicken mixed with a butter, flour, mustard, celery salt, and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the white meat of the cooked chicken and a small portion of the dark meat.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and mustard.

  3. Gradually mix in the water and milk, then add the celery salt and lemon juice.

  4. Combine the sauce with the chopped chicken meat.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered bread and cut into fancy shapes.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water-milk mixture into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and gives flavour to the bread.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the sauce.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling, giving the sandwich its bulk and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the water and milk. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps flour from forming lumps, so the flour-butter base blends into a smooth, even sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, butter, flour, mustard, milk, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, butter, flour, mustard, milk, celery. 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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