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Creamed Chicken

Creamed Chicken is a dish of diced chicken simmered in a butter, flour, broth, and milk sauce, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season diced chicken with salt and pepper and refrigerate overnight.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter over medium heat in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add broth, stirring continuously.

  4. Add hot milk and bring mixture to a boil.

  5. Add chicken and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve over slices of browned toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Cold fowl
Provides the meat that is gently cooked in the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Broth
Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in flour until smooth. Flour must be fully mixed into the melted butter before liquid is added, otherwise it forms lumps that do not smooth out later. Adding broth gradually while stirring keeps the sauce even as it thickens.

“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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