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Chicken Fricassee

A creamy chicken stew made by simmering pieces in salted water, then browning in butter and enriching with cream, flour, egg, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces.

  2. Place in boiling water, adding salt and pepper.

  3. Cook for 1.5 hours or until tender.

  4. Add a sliced onion to the boiling water for flavor.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bones from the chicken.

  2. Dredge the meat with flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Brown in hot butter or fat from fried salt pork.

  4. Strain the cooking liquid, adding the fat from the pan.

  5. Stir in cream or milk, butter, flour, and a beaten egg.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the chicken and enriches the finished sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Large egg
Enriches and thickens the sauce when stirred in beaten.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle simmering.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream, butter, flour, and egg. Egg proteins set with heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Add the beaten egg off the heat or with the liquid barely simmering, and stir constantly for a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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