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Fricasseed Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with bacon, butter, and flour, served over toast, bread, or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fricasseed Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Combine the chicken pieces and bacon or pork in a pot.

  2. Sprinkle salt and pepper on each layer.

  3. Cover the pot.

  4. Simmer until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the chicken from the pot.

  2. Add butter and flour to the pot and stir to combine.

  3. Return the chicken to the pot.

  4. Stew for a few more minutes.

Serve and brown

  1. Serve the chicken on toast, bread, or crackers.

  2. Pour the gravy over it.

  3. Pour off the gravy and let it brown in the pot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

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 meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered simmering.
Bacon or pork
Adds fat and savory smoky flavor that carries into the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps flour cook into a smooth base for the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy with body.

The step that matters

Pour off the gravy and let it brown in the pot.. Browning depends on the Maillard reaction, which needs direct, fairly high heat and dry surfaces. Pale gravy results if the liquid is still too wet or the heat is too low, so watch the color closely.

“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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