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Delicious Cream Gravy for Chicken

A creamy gravy made with butter, flour, broth, and heavy cream, served over chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicious Cream Gravy for Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook the chicken gently in a covered saucepan with enough water to make ½ cup of broth. Do not add water once cooking begins.

  3. Once cooked, pour off the broth without straining.

Make the gravy

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and flour.

  2. Add the broth to the butter‑flour mixture and bring to a boil for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the heavy cream and heat quickly.

Serve

  1. Serve the gravy immediately over the hot chicken.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  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).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the broth that becomes the base of the gravy.
Butter
Carries fat into the gravy, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Combines with butter and broth to thicken the gravy as it boils.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and body, giving the gravy a silky, rich texture.

The step that matters

Bring the flour and broth to a boil. Flour thickens only when it reaches a boil and its starch swells in the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the gravy thin and tasting of raw flour. Add the cream after this, since prolonged boiling can make cream separate.

“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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