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Cream Chicken

Cream Chicken is a baked dish of chicken, sweetbreads, and mushrooms in a cream dressing topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

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

  1. Boil the chickens until tender, then remove the skin and cut into pieces for salad.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads and chop them very finely.

  3. Chop the mushrooms coarsely.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the chicken, sweetbreads, and mushrooms with the cream dressing.

  2. Top with bread crumbs, pieces of butter, and a little cream.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 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. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein, becoming tender when boiled and forming the bulk of the dish.
Sweetbreads
Add a rich, tender texture when finely chopped and blended with the other layers.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor as they release liquid while baking.
Cream dressing
Binds the layers together and keeps the filling moist during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden top as they brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the crumb topping brown and taste savoury.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes. Baking long enough lets the top crumbs brown and the filling heat through, while overbaking can dry the cream dressing and toughen the chicken.

“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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