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Creamed Chicken

A creamy chicken dish with mushrooms, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Creamed Chicken

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in salted water until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the bones and cut the chicken into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth, but do not brown.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk to the butter and flour mixture, stirring continuously.

  4. Add the shredded chicken, cayenne pepper, onion juice, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to the mixture and stir well.

  5. Cook the mushrooms for 10 minutes, then add them to the chicken mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in Swedish Timbals, patties, or on slices of 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that carries the chicken.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly with the butter.
Butter
Fat that combines with the flour to make the roux that thickens the sauce.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the creamed filling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft, tender texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the roux. Adding the milk gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps, so the sauce thickens evenly. Keeping the roux pale, without browning, keeps the flavor mild and the sauce light in color.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, mushroom, butter, flour, pepper, lemon. 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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