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Creole Chicken

A chicken dish simmered with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, green pepper, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Creole Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then tear it into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt butter and fry the chopped onion until yellow.

  2. Add the chopped green pepper, canned tomatoes, mushrooms, salt, and pepper to the skillet.

  3. Stir in the sugar and Worcestershire sauce, and cook until the mixture is thoroughly done.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the chicken to the sauce, cover, and let it cook until well seasoned.

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. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender after boiling and is torn into pieces.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, building the base flavor of the sauce.
Canned tomatoes
Supply liquid and acidity that form the body of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory, earthy flavor to the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and rounds out the sauce's flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thoroughly done. Cooking the tomato and vegetable mixture long enough lets excess water evaporate and the flavors concentrate, so the sauce thickens instead of tasting thin and watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, pepper, tomato, sugar, sauce, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, pepper, tomato, sugar, sauce, butter. 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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