Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Feicassee

A boiled chicken dish served over biscuits with celery and optional oysters, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Chicken Feicassee

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the cut-up chicken in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Add salt or sliced salt pork if desired, and boil until tender.

  3. Remove the chicken, cut it into pieces, and mix with chopped celery.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare hot baking powder biscuits and lay them on a platter.

  2. Place the chicken mixture on top of the biscuits.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour moistened with water or milk, then pour it over the chicken and biscuits.

  4. If preferred, season with butter instead of salt pork.

  5. Oysters can be added for extra flavor.

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

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

  3. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + biscuittop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 protein and meat that becomes tender during boiling.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Baking powder biscuits
Serve as a soft base that soaks up the chicken and gravy.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetable flavor and some crunch to the chicken mixture.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour moistened with water or milk. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold liquid before being added to hot broth; adding it dry or undiluted causes lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse and swell.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, biscuit, flour, milk, butter, oyster):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, biscuit, flour, milk, butter, oyster. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes