Skip to main content
Main

Steamed Chicken

Steamed chicken with a spicy gravy dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Steamed Chicken

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Steamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Steam the chicken

  1. Rub the chicken inside with black pepper and ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the chicken in a steamer over boiling water, cover, and steam for 1.5 hours.

  3. Keep the chicken hot while preparing the dressing.

  4. Cut the chicken into pieces and arrange on a platter.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, boil 1 pint of gravy from the kettle without fat.

  2. Add cayenne pepper and ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt to the gravy.

  3. Stir 1 tablespoon of flour into ¼ cup of cream until smooth.

  4. Add the mixture to the gravy.

  5. Optionally, add nutmeg or celery 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.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth dressing when stirred in with cream.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, softening its flavour.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour of the dressing.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the cream until smooth. Flour clumps when added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it into cold cream first separates the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the gravy without lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, flour, cream):

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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

More steamed chicken recipes

Fillet 4with Oysters 4Dressing 3 See all 32 →

You might also like

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