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Creamed Chicken

A creamy chicken dish made with butter, flour, cream, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the cream, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the ground chicken and mix well.

  2. Heat through and serve.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

  5. Celery + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly with the butter to form a roux.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and, once thickened, gives it a smooth, creamy texture.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream, stirring constantly until thickened. Adding cream slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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