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Cream Chicken

Cream Chicken is a stew of chicken, mushrooms, and breadcrumbs baked in a creamy sauce.

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 ↓

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 chicken

  1. Stew the chickens until tender.

  2. Remove bones and skin, then chop the meat coarsely.

Make the filling

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  2. Add the can of mushrooms.

  3. Take ½ cup of the chicken liquid and thicken it with corn starch.

  4. Combine with the chicken mixture and place in a dish.

Top and bake

  1. Spread fine bread crumbs over the top.

  2. Brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 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 body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed.
Chicken liquid
Supplies moisture and flavor, and is thickened into the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the chicken liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Mushrooms
Add savory flavor and a soft, tender texture to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.

The step that matters

Thicken the chicken liquid with corn starch. Corn starch must be fully mixed into the liquid and heated enough to swell and thicken; if lumpy or undercooked, the sauce stays thin or grainy and the filling turns watery.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, mushroom, corn, 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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