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Fricassed Chicken

A stew of chicken cooked slowly with pork fat, butter, onion, and flour, finished with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Fricassed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean, wash, and cut the chicken into joints.

  2. Place a layer of fat salt pork in the bottom of a pot and lay the chicken on top.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, cover with more pork, and pour in the hot water mixed with butter.

  4. Add the minced onion, cover tightly, and heat very slowly.

Stew and make the sauce

  1. Once the chicken begins to stew, cook steadily for one hour or until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken and keep it hot.

  3. Add boiling water to the pot, strain the liquid, and thicken with browned flour.

  4. Pour the sauce over the chicken before serving.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat that becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the chicken moist as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the braising liquid.
Flour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a sauce when browned.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stew.

The step that matters

Heating the pot very slowly. Gentle heat lets the chicken simmer and become tender without toughening or drying the muscle fibers. Rapid boiling can make the meat tough and dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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