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Cream Chicken

Cream Chicken is a baked dish of chicken and sweetbreads in a cream sauce with mushrooms, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cream Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken and sweetbreads until cooked through.

  2. Cut the chicken and sweetbreads into pieces and combine with the mushrooms.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour with butter, then add the cream and bring to a boil.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, red pepper, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the sauce with bread crumbs and butter, then pour over the chicken mixture.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour form a roux for the sauce.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, soft texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.
Sweetbreads
Provide a tender, meaty texture within the dish.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil. Flour must be cooked in the hot butter and cream long enough to thicken smoothly; if the sauce is not brought to a boil and stirred, it can stay lumpy or taste of raw flour.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

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