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Brown Fricassee

A stew of chicken and pork in a browned flour thickened gravy.

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

Stew the chicken

  1. Place the chicken in a saucepan and cover with water. Stew gently until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the saucepan and drain it.

Brown the meat

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

  2. Fry the chicken in the pan with the pork until it is a rich brown color.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Empty the frying pan, pour in the chicken broth, and add browned flour to thicken.

  2. Season the gravy with pepper and let the chicken simmer in it for a few moments.

  3. Serve very 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
Stewing makes it tender, and frying then gives the pieces a rich brown surface.
Pork slices
Browning them in the pan adds savory, meaty flavor to the fat and drippings.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until rich brown. Chicken pieces that were just stewed are pale and soft, so they need enough time in hot fat for the surface to brown. Browning builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, but the pieces can scorch if the pan is too hot or they are left too long.

“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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