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Cream Chicken with Sweetbreads

A creamy chicken and sweetbread dish with mushrooms, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cream Chicken with Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Remove the pipes from the sweetbreads and trim them.

  2. Wash the sweetbreads.

  3. Cook the sweetbreads in boiling salted water for 5 minutes, then simmer on the back of the stove for 25 minutes.

  4. Plunge the sweetbreads into cold water, then place them on ice.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the chicken bones.

  3. Chop the chicken and sweetbreads together, not too fine.

  4. Add the mushrooms to the mixture and mix the ingredients together.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the sweet cream, salt, red pepper and grated onion to the sauce.

  4. Pour the cream mixture over the chicken and sweetbreads, mixing well.

  5. If the mixture is not moist enough, add more cream.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.

  2. Cover the dish with bread crumbs.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the body of the dish.
Chicken
Adds bulk and savory meaty flavor to the filling.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce that binds the filling.
Sweet cream
Forms the sauce that moistens the filling and carries it during baking.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour must be fully combined with melted butter before the cream is added; otherwise lumps form and the sauce will not thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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