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Chicken Cream

A creamy chicken dish topped with poached eggs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Pound the meat of a boiled fowl until fine.

  2. Add enough milk to create a thick paste.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Stir the mixture over heat until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Pour onto a dish and arrange 6 poached eggs on top.

  2. Garnish with sprigs of parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

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

  4. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of a boiled fowl
Forms the body of the dish, giving it a smooth, paste-like texture once pounded.
Milk
Adds moisture so the pounded meat becomes a thick, spreadable paste.
Poached eggs
Sit on top as a rich, soft-textured topping that adds protein-based body.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over heat until fully cooked. Heat must be gentle and constant so the mixture thickens and cooks through without curdling or scorching. Stopping too early leaves it loose and underset, while overheating can cause the milk proteins to separate.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, pepper, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, pepper, egg. 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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