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Fricasseed Chicken

Chicken simmered with bacon, pork, and a browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken with bacon in enough water to cover until tender.

  2. Drain the chicken.

Make the gravy

  1. Fry the pork until cooked.

  2. Fry the chicken with the pork until browned.

  3. Pour the broth into the frying pan with the pork fat.

  4. Add browned flour to make a gravy.

  5. Season with butter.

  6. Add the chicken to the gravy, ensuring the fat is hot for browning.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat and flavor to the cooking water.
Pork
Supplies rendered fat for browning the chicken and flavoring the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as its starch gelatinizes when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, buttery flavor to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Add the chicken to the gravy while the fat is hot. Hot fat browns the chicken surface through the Maillard reaction, creating flavor and color. If the fat is not hot enough, the chicken steams instead and stays 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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