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Chicken Wiggle

A creamy chicken dish with butter, milk, flour, stock, peas, and red pepper, served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Friday club, Yarmouth, Mass. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Wiggle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add two cups of cold chicken cut into small pieces or one can chopped.

  3. Add one cupful of milk or cream with two tablespoonfuls of flour, one cup of chicken stock if you have it, otherwise a little more milk, one can peas (strain off liquor), salt, and a dash of red pepper.

  4. Cook for a few minutes and serve on toast or crackers.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

885Calories
53 gProtein
25 gFat
110 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chicken100g cooked165
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Chili1 tsp (2.7g)8
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Friday club, Yarmouth, Mass. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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 milk and stock into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and flavor as the base for the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds creaminess.

The step that matters

Add the flour with the milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Whisking it smoothly into the milk first lets its starch disperse and thicken the sauce evenly.

“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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