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Chicken Fricassee, Creole

A Creole chicken stew with tomatoes, onions, parsley, and flour, simmered for 1½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee, Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Fry and brown

  1. Lightly fry the chicken in the usual way.

  2. Dredge flour into the gravy and brown it.

Stew

  1. Add 1 quart of boiling water, tomatoes, minced onion, and parsley.

  2. Stew slowly for 1½ hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with rice, or add rice to the stew and cook together if preferred.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 dish, and its browned surface adds savory flavor to the gravy.
Flour
Browns in the fat to color and flavor the gravy, then thickens the sauce as it stews.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the richness of the chicken and gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness that softens and mellows during the long, slow stew.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour into the gravy. Flour cooked to a light brown develops a nutty, toasted flavor and color. Underbrowned flour tastes raw and pasty, while overbrowned flour turns bitter and dark, so the gravy needs steady attention at this stage.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, tomato, onion, rice):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, tomato, onion, rice. 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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