Skip to main content
Main

Fricasseed Chickens

A stew of chicken pieces browned and simmered in a cream sauce with nutmeg, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricasseed Chickens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in cold water until the blood is drawn out.

  2. Wipe the chicken, season with pepper and salt, and dredge with flour.

Fry the chicken

  1. Fry the chicken in lard or butter until golden brown on both sides.

  2. Remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Skim the gravy in the frying pan and add ½ pint of cream.

  2. Season with nutmeg, pepper, and salt, then thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour it around the chicken.

  4. Fry parsley in lard until green and crisp, then place on top of the chicken.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and browns in the hot fat.
Flour
Dredged on the chicken to help browning, and used with butter to thicken the sauce.
Lard or butter
Frying fat that browns the chicken and adds richness to the pan gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce made from the pan gravy.
Butter
Rolled in flour and added to the sauce to thicken it and add richness.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter rolled in flour. Flour thickens only when heated with liquid, so the sauce must be brought to a boil and kept simmering to swell the starch and cook out the raw flour taste. Adding the paste to a cold or lightly warm sauce can leave it lumpy or pasty.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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

More chicken fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 6White 6Cold 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 369 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes