Name: Creamed Chicken with Mushroom's
Ingredients: 2 large chickens; 3 onions, diced; 1 carrot, diced; some celery, diced; butter; flour; coarse sea salt; pepper; 2 cans button mushrooms

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken with Mushroom's

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Boil the chickens with onions, carrot, and celery until tender.
Remove the chickens and reduce the broth to about 2 quarts.
Strain the broth and thicken it with butter and flour.

Finish the creamed chicken

Season the sauce with salt and pepper.
Add the mushrooms to the sauce.
Remove the meat from the chickens, dice it into ½ inch squares, and add it to the sauce.
Simmer for 15 minutes and serve.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens: Provide the meat and the flavorful broth that becomes the sauce base.
Butter: Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavor when thickened with flour.
Flour: Thickens the strained broth into a creamy, coating sauce as it cooks.
Button mushrooms: Add earthy flavor and a tender, meaty texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the fat and liquid long enough to swell its starch and thicken smoothly; adding it too quickly or without stirring can leave lumps or a pasty taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom):

Capsicumfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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.

Chicken Broth257 recipes

Chicken Soup156 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Cream of Celery Soup113 recipes

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Creamed Chicken with Mushroom's