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To Fricassee Chicken

Chicken simmered in a butter‑flour‑milk broth, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wipe the chicken.

  2. Cut the chicken at the joints as you would for frying.

  3. Cover the chicken with boiling water.

  4. Cook the chicken until tender, reducing the water to 1 pint.

  5. Remove the chicken.

  6. Drain the chicken.

Brown and make the sauce

  1. Dredge the chicken with flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Brown the chicken in hot butter or pork strips.

  3. Place the chicken on toast.

  4. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the butter, blending well.

  5. Add 1 cup of rich milk and the chicken broth, seasoning to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken on the platter.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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
Cooked until tender in water, then browned, giving the dish its main body.
Flour
Dredging coat helps the chicken brown, and thickens the sauce when blended with butter.
Butter
Browns the dredged chicken and forms the base of the roux for the sauce.
Rich milk
Forms the body of the cream sauce, adding richness and smoothness.
Chicken broth
Adds savory flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the dredged chicken in hot butter or pork strips. The chicken is already cooked through, so the goal is color and crust. The flour coating browns through Maillard reactions only when the fat is hot enough; a cool pan steams the coating and leaves it pale and soggy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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