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Creamed Chicken

A baked chicken dish with sweetbreads, mushrooms, and a creamy sauce topped with breadcrumbs and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the chicken and sweetbreads until cooked, then let them cool and chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk or cream with butter and flour, rubbing them together until smooth.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat until it reaches boiling point, stirring until thick.

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

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, mix the chicken, sweetbreads, and mushrooms together.

  2. Pour the sauce over the mixture, cover with bread crumbs, and dot with bits of breakfast bacon.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 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.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, helping it feel smooth.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that becomes thick and creamy.
Sweetbreads
Provide a tender, rich meat texture in the filling.
Fat hen
Supplies the main cooked meat for the filling, chopped finely.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce until thick. Flour thickens only when the mixture reaches boiling and is stirred constantly; undercooked or lumpy sauce stays thin and can cling unevenly to the filling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, milk, butter, flour, 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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