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Chicken Fricassee

A French-style chicken dish simmered in a sauce of milk, water, stock, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,149 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in milk and water for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the soaked chicken pieces.

  3. Season the chicken lightly with salt and pepper, then dust the chicken with flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter or olive oil until hot.

  2. Fry the chicken until golden brown, then remove the chicken from the pan.

  3. Add garlic, chives, parsley, bay leaf, mushrooms, and stock or cream to the fat, season the mixture with salt and pepper, and heat the mixture until hot.

  4. Return the chicken to the pan and simmer slowly until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the chicken and place it on a hot serving dish.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the gravy, then boil the gravy quickly.

  3. Skim the gravy.

  4. Pour the gravy over the chicken and garnish with pieces of fried bread.

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. Garlic + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish; frying browns the surface and simmering makes the meat tender.
Flour
Dusted on the chicken and stirred into the gravy, it thickens the sauce and helps it cling to the meat.
Butter or olive oil
Fat for frying the chicken, which browns the surface and carries flavour into the gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook.
Brown stock or cream
Forms the liquid of the gravy; stock adds savoury depth and cream adds richness and body.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until golden brown. Flour-dusted chicken browns through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour in the fat. Pale or greasy frying leaves a weaker, less savoury gravy base.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, pepper, flour, butter, garlic, chive. 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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