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Creamed Chicken

A baked chicken dish with a creamy mushroom sauce topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

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 ↓

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 chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until cooked, then let it cool and cut into salad-sized pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream and milk and bring to a boil.

  2. In another pan, melt the butter, then add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Pour the boiling milk and cream mixture over the butter and flour, stirring well.

  4. Add the grated onion, nutmeg, and season with black and red pepper to taste.

  5. Mix the chicken pieces and mushrooms into the sauce until well coated.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish, top with grated bread crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish, cooked first and then folded into the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the cream and milk into a sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Milk
Thins the sauce with liquid, balancing the richness of the cream.
Mushrooms
Adds savory, earthy flavor and a tender texture throughout the sauce.
Butter
Melted with flour to start the roux, and dotted on top to enrich and brown the crust.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk and cream to the roux. Pouring hot liquid into the butter and flour mixture while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, cream, milk, flour, butter, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, cream, milk, flour, butter, onion. 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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