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Fricasseed Chicken

A chicken dish cooked with butter, flour, and optional onion, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. In a cooking pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until slightly browned.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the cut-up chicken and cook until tender.

  2. If desired, add the chopped onion to the gravy.

  3. Before serving, garnish with fresh 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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the gravy and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks in the melted butter, giving body and a slightly toasted flavor.
Whole chicken
Forms the main dish, cooked until tender in the thickened gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the gravy when included.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour in melted butter until slightly browned cooks out its raw starch taste and builds nutty flavor. Stopping too early leaves a pasty taste, while cooking too long can scorch it and darken the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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