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Fricasseed Chicken

Chicken pieces simmered in water, thickened with flour and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper, optionally finished with salt pork or browned with butter.

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 and stew

  1. Cut the chicken into separate joints: back into two pieces and breast into three or more.

  2. Stew the chicken in enough water to cover until very tender, about one teacup of water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix the flour with the milk and add to the pot, letting it boil.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then transfer to a platter.

  3. If desired, add the salt pork thirty minutes before serving for extra flavor.

  4. For a brown fricassee, pour off most of the liquid before the chicken is done, add butter, and fry the pieces until browned.

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 main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding richness and softness.
Salt pork
Adds savory, fatty flavor to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the pieces brown when fried at the end.

The step that matters

Letting the flour-milk mixture boil. Flour needs to reach a boil in the liquid to fully swell and thicken. Boiling too gently can leave the sauce thin or floury-tasting, while boiling too hard after milk is added can scorch it or cause it to separate.

“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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