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Brown Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of browned chicken pieces simmered in a butter‑flour sauce with onion, carrot, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Brown the chicken pieces in butter over medium heat, being careful not to burn the butter.

  2. Once browned, move the chicken to one side of the pan.

Make the sauce and simmer

  1. Add flour to the fat, mix well, and then add cold water or stock.

  2. Stir until the mixture boils, moving the chicken around in the sauce.

  3. Add onion, chopped carrot, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover the pan and let it simmer until the chicken is tender.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the chicken and adds richness to the pan fat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats with the fat.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the sauce during simmering.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the fat and liquid. Adding cold liquid to a flour and fat mixture and stirring until it boils lets the starch swell evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, onion, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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