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Chicken Fricassee, Creole

A Creole-style chicken fricassee simmered with tomatoes, onion, parsley, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee, Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Lightly fry the chicken in a skillet until golden.

Make the stew

  1. Dredge flour into the gravy and brown it.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water, 1 quart of sliced tomatoes, minced onion, and parsley.

  3. Stew slowly for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with rice.

  2. Add rice to the stew and cook until very moist.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 body of the dish, with browning from frying adding color and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it browns, giving the stew body and a richer, toasted flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, moisture and savory flavor that combine into the sauce during slow stewing.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stewed sauce.
Rice
Absorbs liquid from the stew, soaking up sauce and becoming moist.

The step that matters

Browning the flour into the gravy. Flour must be cooked long enough in the fat and juices to brown and lose its raw taste; undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavor and can make the gravy lumpy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, tomato, onion, rice):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, tomato, onion, rice. 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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