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Creamed Chicken and Mushrooms

Creamed Chicken and Mushrooms is a dish of cooked chicken and mushrooms simmered in a cream and broth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and mushrooms

  1. Parboil the chicken until cooked through.

  2. Reduce the chicken broth to ¾ pint.

  3. Boil the mushrooms in salted water for about 20 minutes.

  4. Cut the chicken and mushrooms into pieces and mix them together.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil, then add the chicken broth, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour as desired.

Combine and cook

  1. Add the chicken and mushrooms to the sauce and cook for about 15 minutes.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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 body of the dish once cooked through and cut into pieces.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture after boiling.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Chicken broth
Supplies savory flavour and liquid; reducing it concentrates taste for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a creamy sauce by starch gelatinizing as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a mellow flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce. Adding it too little or stirring poorly can leave lumps or a thin, floury sauce.

“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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