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Chicken Fricassee

Chicken Fricassee is a stew of chicken simmered with onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, and a roux of flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and ginger.

  2. Let the chicken stand for 3 hours.

  3. Place the chicken in a kettle and cover it with boiling water.

Cook the chicken and vegetables

  1. Add the chopped onion fried in butter, chopped celery, sliced carrots, and tomatoes.

  2. Cook slowly until the chicken is tender.

  3. Remove the chicken from the kettle and strain the stock.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Brown the flour in hot butter.

  2. Add the stock and chopped parsley.

  3. Stir until the mixture boils.

  4. Heat the chicken in the stock before serving.

  5. If desired, add the egg yolk to the stock.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Ginger + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly nutty sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and, with the flour, forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Chicken
Main protein; slow cooking in water turns it tender and releases flavor into the stock.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the stock, rounding out its flavor.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a richer texture and color.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter until it boils. Flour must be cooked in fat and stirred as the liquid is added so it dissolves smoothly; lumps form if the mixture is not stirred, and the sauce stays thin if it is not brought to a boil.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, onion, butter, celery, carrot, tomato):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, onion, butter, celery, carrot, tomato. 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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