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Chicken Wiggles

A creamy chicken dish with celery, peas, and walnuts served over toast triangles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chicken Wiggles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Scald the cream and milk in a double boiler over hot water.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, butter, and salt.

  3. Cook until thickened.

Add the filling and serve

  1. Stir in the chicken, peas, and celery.

  2. Cook until heated through.

  3. Add the walnut meats.

  4. Serve hot on toast triangles.

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. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Celery + peastop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when combined with egg yolks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. Over direct or excessive heat they can curdle and turn grainy, so keep the double boiler at a moderate temperature and stir steadily.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, celery, milk, walnut, meat, butter, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, celery, milk, walnut, meat, butter, egg. 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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