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Fricaseed Chicken

A chicken dish simmered in broth and finished with a sauce thickened by egg, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Fricaseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chicken as for boiling.

  2. Cook the chicken until tender.

  3. Keep the chicken hot in a dish with 1 teacup of its broth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the remaining pint of broth with the beaten egg, butter, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Add a can of mushrooms to the gravy.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

  2. Garnish with hard boiled eggs and parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 body of the dish, cooked until tender.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and gives it a richer body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth gravy with body.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Beaten egg in hot liquid can curdle or scramble if it boils too hard or too long. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth while the egg and flour thicken it.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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