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Fricasseed Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with water, salt, pepper, flour, butter, and cream, finished with optional mace or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chickens and soak them in water for 30 minutes to make them white.

  2. Drain the chickens and place them in a saucepan with ½ cup of fresh water.

  3. Season the chickens with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew and finish

  1. Bring the saucepan to a simmer and stew for 30 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the flour‑butter mixture to the saucepan.

  4. Stir in ½ pint of cream and boil until the chickens are tender.

  5. Add mace or onion parsley if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Chickens
Provide the meat that is stewed until tender in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when mixed with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-butter mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it should be worked smooth with the butter first and then stirred into the saucepan so it thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

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