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Creamed Chicken

A dish of cold chicken mixed with cream sauce, seasoned, and optionally cooked with oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream sauce and cold chicken.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and celery salt.

  3. If desired, add the small raw oysters.

  4. Cook over medium heat until the oysters are fried at the edges.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream sauce
Provides the creamy base and moisture that coats and binds the chicken.
Cold chicken
Supplies the main body and protein of the dish.
Raw oysters
Add briny flavour, and their edges firm and brown when heated.

The step that matters

Cook the oysters only until their edges fry. Oysters cook very quickly. Overcooking toughens their proteins and shrinks them, so they turn rubbery and lose their delicate briny flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, chicken, pepper, oyster):

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, chicken, pepper, oyster. 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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