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Chicken Cream for an Invalid

A creamy chicken sauce made with boiled chicken, broth, cream, salt, mace, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Chicken Cream for an Invalid

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Pound the chicken breast to a paste in a mortar, adding some broth gradually.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and boil for a few minutes with the salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Refrigerate until needed.

Finish the sauce

  1. Heat the mixture over boiling water and stir in the cream.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  3. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

  4. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Chicken + macetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled chicken breast
Pounded and sieved, it gives the sauce body and a smooth, thick texture.
Chicken broth
Thins the pounded chicken into a pourable sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture before adding the cream. Cream can split or curdle if it gets too hot. Heating the base over boiling water, rather than directly over flame, keeps the temperature gentle so the sauce stays smooth when the cream goes in.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, mace. 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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