Skip to main content
Main

Hot Cream-chicken Sandwich

A sandwich of chicken slices on toast topped with a white sauce and garnished with potato rosettes, creamed peas, and radish slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hot Cream-chicken Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place slices of chicken on slices of toast.

Make the white sauce

  1. Prepare a white sauce by melting butter in a saucepan, adding flour, and stirring until smooth.

  2. Gradually whisk in milk, cooking until thickened.

  3. Season with salt and paprika.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken on toast.

  2. Serve on individual platters or plates, garnished with potato rosettes, creamed peas, and radish slices.

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

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

  2. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Potato + radishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a smooth, stable white sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth base for the flour.
Chicken
Supplies the main protein, sitting on the toast under the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until smooth. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter and whisked well, or lumps form and the sauce will not thicken evenly. Adding the milk gradually, while whisking, keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce turns smooth rather than clumped.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, butter, flour, potato, peas):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, butter, flour, potato, peas. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes