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Fricasseed Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered in salted water, thickened with butter and flour, served over biscuits.

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 ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the chicken and soak it in cold salt water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the chicken skin side down in a pot with the salt pork and sprinkle with pepper.

  3. Add enough hot water to cover the chicken and cover the pot.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew slowly until the chicken is tender.

  2. Remove the chicken and skim off any excess oil from the liquid.

  3. Mix butter with flour to thicken the remaining liquid and boil until the flour is cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken on split hot shortcakes or biscuits and pour the gravy over it.

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 + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the cooking liquid as it stews.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and combines with flour to form a smooth, rich base.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Skim off excess oil before thickening. Fat from the chicken and salt pork floats on the liquid. Removing the excess keeps the gravy from tasting greasy and helps it thicken smoothly.

“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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