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Creamed Chicken

A dish of tender chicken simmered in a sauce of flour, butter, water, and cream, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Steam the chicken until tender, using the liquid for basting.

  2. Cut up the chicken, using only choice pieces, and bone the first joint if necessary.

  3. Place the chicken in a dripping pan and cover to prevent browning.

Make the sauce

  1. Make an uncooked sauce with flour, water, and butter, seasoned well to the thickness of cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the chicken with the sauce until tender.

  2. Sprinkle the chicken thickly with flour and let it brown, turning the pieces in the sauce.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, add enough cream to the gravy to achieve the desired thickness.

  4. Continue turning the chicken in the gravy until ready to serve.

  5. If the gravy is thick after removing the chicken, thin it with cream or water and strain.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter 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 meat, which steaming tenderises before the final gravy stage.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and, dusted on the chicken, helps it brown and form a gravy coating.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavour and smoothness.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the gravy to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the cream ten minutes before serving. Cream added too early can keep reducing and thickening, while adding it late lets you control the final thickness and keeps the gravy smooth and rich.

“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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