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Chicken Creamed

A creamy chicken dish with mushrooms, green pepper, capers, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Creamed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the white meat of cooked chicken into small dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the flour until creamy and smooth.

  2. Gradually add the hot milk while stirring constantly to prevent lumps.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the grated onion, salt, and egg yolks, stirring briskly.

  4. In a separate pan, lightly fry the mushrooms and green pepper in butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fried mushrooms, green pepper, capers, and nutmeg to the sauce.

  2. Stir in the diced chicken and serve.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour when frying the mushrooms and pepper.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.
Raw egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the sauce when stirred in.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually. Pouring the milk in slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce stays smooth rather than forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, mushroom, pepper, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, mushroom, pepper, capers. 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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