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Chicken Fricassee

A stew of chicken and pickled pork cooked with bay leaves, mace, pepper, and salt, finished with pastry squares.

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 ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the chicken

  1. Place the chicken in a stew pan and cover with cold water.

  2. Skim the surface just before it begins to boil.

  3. Add the sliced pickled pork, bay leaves, and mace.

  4. Cook for 1 hour or until the chicken is tender.

  5. Add pepper and salt if needed.

Add the pastry and finish

  1. Cut the pastry dough into squares and add to the stew.

  2. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the bay leaves and mace 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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pork + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 body of the stew and tender meat once simmered.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Pastry dough
Cooks in the stew to thicken the liquid and add substance to the dish.

The step that matters

Skim the surface just before it begins to boil. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the water heats, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting. Doing it before a hard boil prevents those particles from being cooked back into the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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