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Fricassee Chicken

A stew of young chickens cooked slowly in water, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and optional celery, thickened with flour and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the chicken

  1. Gut the chickens and place them in a stewpan with enough cold water to cover them.

  2. Cover the pan and heat slowly, then stew for about 1 hour or until tender.

  3. For older chickens, stew for 3 to 4 hours until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Once tender, season with salt, pepper, butter, and celery if desired.

  2. Mix the flour with a little water or milk and add to the stew.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and let boil for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chicken on a warm platter, pour some gravy over it, and serve the rest in a separate dish.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as they stew slowly in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a gravy when mixed smooth and cooked.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy, adding body and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the gravy is too hot or boils hard. Adding them to the stew, then only boiling briefly, helps keep the gravy smooth and thickened.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, flour, milk, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, flour, milk, egg. 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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