Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Cream or Mince

A stew of chicken, allspice, nutmeg, and pepper thickened with cream or cornstarch, served in a mug.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chicken Cream or Mince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in a cloth until cooked.

  2. Remove the breast and upper part of the leg; mince and pound in a mortar.

  3. Chop the rest of the chicken with the bones and place in a stewpan with water, allspice, nutmeg, and pepper.

Make the stew

  1. Let it stew until reduced to 1 pint or less.

  2. Strain the mixture and rub the minced chicken through a sieve into the gravy.

  3. Thicken with cream or cornstarch mixed with butter.

  4. Heat the mixture in a mug placed in a saucepan of boiling water.

  5. Add salt to taste.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and, through the bones, the flavour of the stew base.
Fresh cream or cornstarch
Thickens the stew, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the thickener blend smoothly into the stew.

The step that matters

Thicken with cream or cornstarch mixed with butter. Cornstarch must be mixed with fat or cold liquid first so it disperses without lumps, and it thickens only when heated. Adding it directly to hot liquid causes clumps and uneven texture.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, nutmeg, pepper, cream, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes