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Hot Chicken Sandwich, Indienne

A sandwich of buttered white bread topped with chopped chicken and hot curry gravy, served with cabbage or celery salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Chicken Sandwich, Indienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the flesh from the bones of the chicken and chop the meat into small pieces.

  2. Toast rounds of white bread and spread them with butter.

  3. Generously top the buttered bread with the chopped chicken and press them together in pairs.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, mix 1 teaspoon of curry powder with every 2 tablespoons of flour, using good chicken broth for better flavor.

Serve

  1. Pour very hot chicken gravy over the sandwiches before serving.

  2. Serve with cabbage or celery salad or stewed cranberries.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chicken
Provides the main filling and savory meaty flavor of the sandwich.
White bread
Forms the base of the sandwich and soaks up the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly when toasted.
Chicken gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor that softens the bread and coats the chicken.
Curry powder
Adds warm spice aroma and flavor to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the chicken and bread.

The step that matters

Pour very hot chicken gravy over the sandwiches before serving. The gravy must be very hot so it stays warm through the dish and softens the bread evenly. Cool gravy leaves the sandwiches dry and the flour may not thicken properly.

“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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