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Creamed Chicken

A creamy chicken dish made with butter, flour, cream, milk, chicken stock, and diced chicken, seasoned with celery salt, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until blended.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk, cream, and chicken stock.

  4. Season with celery salt, salt, and pepper to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the diced chicken and cook until heated through.

  2. Serve hot on toast or in pastry shells.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving it body.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.
Diced chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot milk, cream, and chicken stock. Adding liquid slowly to the butter and flour lets the roux blend smoothly without lumps. Adding it all at once can leave floury clumps that are hard to whisk out.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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