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Fricasee Chicken

Fricassee Chicken is a tender chicken stew thickened with flour and cream, served over hot biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricasee Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken at the joints into smaller pieces.

  2. Cover the chicken with water and cook until tender.

Brown and make the gravy

  1. Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the chicken to the skillet, season with salt and pepper, and brown on both sides.

  3. Pour in the cooking liquid and let it boil.

  4. To thicken the gravy, mix flour with cream and a little milk, then stir into the gravy.

  5. Cook for a few moments until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken and gravy over hot biscuits.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  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 main protein and, as it cooks, the savory cooking liquid used for the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the chicken brown in the skillet.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cream and milk before stirring into hot liquid, otherwise it can clump. The gravy then needs a few moments of simmering so the starch swells and thickens fully.

“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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