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Creamed Chicken

Creamed Chicken is a dish of diced boiled chicken simmered in a butter and cream sauce thickened with toasted cracker crumbs.

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

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, melt the butter and add the cream and grated onion along with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture until warm, then thicken it with the cracker crumbs.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the diced chicken and stir until boiling.

  2. Serve the creamed chicken on rounds of toast.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the cream into a creamy sauce.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and background flavor to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the base before the cream goes in.

The step that matters

Thickening with cracker crumbs. Crumbs need to be stirred in while the cream is warm, not boiling hard, so they hydrate evenly and thicken smoothly without lumps or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, butter, 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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