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Fricassee Chicken

Chicken fricassee is a stew of chicken pieces cooked in a thickened gravy with celery and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fricassee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the chicken

  1. Clean, dress, and cut the chicken into parts.

  2. Place the chicken in a stew pan and add enough water to cover it.

  3. Cover the pan and heat slowly until it boils, then stew until tender.

Thicken the gravy

  1. Mix the flour with milk and add a dash of pepper.

  2. Thicken the gravy in which the chicken was cooked with the flour mixture.

  3. Blend the eggs with a little of the gravy before adding to the hot gravy.

Finish

  1. Boil the celery and salt with the chicken.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Celery + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  5. Butter + celerytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded fat to the dish.
Celery
Adds a mild, savory aroma and a little texture.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the gravy. Eggs can curdle and turn grainy when they hit hot liquid directly. Blending them with a little gravy first tempers them, so they thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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