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Fricassee of Small Chickens

A stew of small chickens cooked with butter, milk, wine, flour, salt, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Randolph (1762–1828) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricassee of Small Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Take off the legs and wings of four chickens.

  2. Separate the breasts from the backs.

  3. Cut off the necks and divide the backs across.

  4. Clean the gizzards nicely.

  5. Put the gizzards, livers, and other parts of the chicken, after washing clean, into a sauce pan.

  6. Add pepper, salt, and a little mace.

Stew the chicken

  1. Cover them with water and stew them till tender.

  2. Take them out.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Thicken half a pint of the water with two tablespoonsful of flour rubbed into four ounces of butter.

  2. Add half a pint of new milk.

  3. Boil all together a few minutes.

  4. Add a gill of white wine, stirring it in carefully so it may not curdle.

  5. Put the chickens in, and continue to shake the pan until they are sufficiently hot.

  6. Serve them up.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

896Calories
52 gProtein
24 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chicken100g cooked165
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Randolph (1762–1828). 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. See the original page.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. White wine + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,904 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and, worked with flour, helps thicken it into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken rather than running thin.
New milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce, mellowing its flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the white wine to the milk sauce. Acid can cause milk proteins to clot and curdle, so the wine should be stirred in gently and slowly while the sauce is still moving, rather than dumped in or allowed to boil hard afterward.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, white wine, chicken, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, white wine, chicken, flour. 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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