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Cream Chicken

Cream Chicken is a baked dish of chicken and sweetbreads in a cream sauce with onions, pepper, and optional mushrooms, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the chicken and sweetbreads until tender.

  2. Once cooled, cut them into pieces as for a salad.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream.

  2. In another pan, stir the flour into the melted butter until smooth.

  3. Pour the flour mixture into the hot cream, stirring until it thickens.

  4. Add the grated onion and season with red and black pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the chicken, sweetbreads, mushrooms, and cream dressing in a baking dish.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 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. 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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled before baking.
Sweetbreads
Adds a rich, tender texture to the meat filling.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Enriches the flour roux and adds fat for flavor and browning on top.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden topping during baking.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the hot cream. Adding the roux to hot cream while stirring keeps it smooth; if stirring stops, lumps can form and the sauce may thicken unevenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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