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Fricasseed Chicken

Chicken pieces stewed in water, thickened with flour and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fricasseed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into joints: separate the back into 2 pieces and the breast into 3 or more.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew the chicken in enough water to cover until the meat is very tender, about 1 cup of water.

  2. Mix the flour with the milk and add to the pot.

  3. Let the mixture boil.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and brown

  1. Transfer the chicken to a platter.

  2. Add the salt pork strips 30 minutes before serving, if desired.

  3. For a brown fricassee, remove most of the liquid before the chicken is done.

  4. Add butter and let the pieces brown in the pot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 meat, which becomes tender as connective tissue softens during slow stewing.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it heats.
Milk
Adds creamy body and dairy richness to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor, and helps the pieces brown at the end.

The step that matters

Removing most of the liquid before the chicken is done. For a brown fricassee, the pieces need to sear in the butter rather than steam. If too much liquid remains, the chicken stays pale and the surface cannot brown well.

“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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