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Chicken Fricassee

Chicken fricassee made by boiling chicken with celery, salt, optional salt pork, served over baking powder biscuits, topped with thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens and place them in a kettle with enough cold water to cover.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt or sliced salt pork if desired.

  3. Cut up the head of celery and add a part of it to the pot.

  4. Boil until the chickens are tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour moistened with water or milk.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare hot baking powder biscuits and break them open on a platter.

  2. Place the chicken on top of the biscuits.

  3. Pour the thickened gravy over the chicken and biscuits.

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. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + biscuittop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provides the meat and the cooking broth that becomes the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as its starch sets with heat.
Baking powder biscuits
Soft, absorbent base that soaks up the gravy and holds the chicken.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour moistened with water or milk. Flour added dry to hot liquid forms lumps because its starch clumps before it disperses. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with cold water or milk lets the starch spread evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly as it heats.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, biscuit, flour, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, biscuit, flour, milk. 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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