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Creamed Chicken on Toast

Creamed chicken served over toasted bread, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the creamed chicken

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Add shredded chicken, salt, and pepper; mix well.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread slices until golden brown.

  2. Serve the creamed chicken over the toast, garnished with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Melts to form the fat base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the flour starch gelatinises.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the creamed filling.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the sauce should be cooked until it coats a spoon.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

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