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Fricassee of Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered in a butter‑flour gravy with celery salt and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and singe the chicken.

  2. Cut the chicken into serving pieces at the joints.

  3. Place the chicken in a kettle and cover with boiling water.

  4. Add salt and pepper, and simmer until tender, reducing the water to about 1 pint.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the chicken and melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour to the butter and mix well.

  3. Slowly pour in the chicken broth while stirring.

  4. Add more salt if needed, along with pepper, celery salt, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the chicken and serve. Optionally, add dumplings or cover with pastry and bake for chicken pie.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 protein and meat that becomes tender when simmered in water.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the chicken broth while stirring. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour mixed into the fat, so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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