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Cream Chicken

A stew of chicken and mushrooms in sweet cream, topped with cracker crumbs and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Cream Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stew the chickens until very tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces.

  3. Add the chopped mushrooms.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Bring the sweet cream to a boil and thicken it with the flour rubbed into the butter.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chicken.

Bake

  1. Top with cracker crumbs and bits of butter.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 30 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.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Sweet cream
Forms the liquid base that carries the dish's richness and moisture.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and works with the flour to make a smooth thickener.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury flavour and a soft texture to the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, lightly browned topping during baking.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with flour and butter. Add the flour-butter paste to boiling cream gradually and keep stirring, so the starch disperses evenly and thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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