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Creamed Chicken with Paprika Gravy

A chicken dish of jointed chicken pot-roasted with onion, then simmered and finished with a flour and sour cream paprika gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken with Paprika Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Joint the chicken and season with salt.

  2. Fry the chopped onion in butter until soft.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add the chicken and pot roast until golden brown.

  2. Cover with boiling water and simmer until the chicken is tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix flour into the sour cream and add to the chicken.

  2. Season with paprika and boil until the gravy thickens.

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

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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; pot roasting browns its surface and simmering makes it tender.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy body that gives the gravy its creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it boils, giving it body and a smooth, coating consistency.
Onion
Softens in butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the dish.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, carrying flavour and helping it soften evenly.

The step that matters

Boil until the gravy thickens. Flour needs to boil in the liquid to swell its starch fully. Stirring it into sour cream first helps avoid lumps, and boiling long enough removes the raw flour taste and sets the gravy's body.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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