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Brown Fricassee

A chicken fricassee simmered in a brown gravy thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the chicken in a saucepan and cover it with water.

  2. Stew the chicken gently until tender.

  3. In a frying pan, cook the slices of pork until browned.

  4. Drain the chicken.

  5. Fry the chicken with the pork until it is a rich brown color.

  6. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour in the broth.

  2. Add browned flour to thicken the broth.

  3. Season with pepper.

  4. Let the chicken simmer in the gravy for a few moments.

  5. Serve hot.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle stewing.
Pork
Browning the slices adds savory flavor to the chicken and the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken with the pork until a rich brown color. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are dry on the surface brown better, while pieces that are too crowded steam instead and stay pale.

“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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